Cinema museum seeks ideas
Citizens can etch their name in the annals of Indian cinema history priding themselves that they have also been a part of the prestigious project, by providing valuable inputs and items as also innovative suggestions to the proposed country’s first-of-its-kind Museum of Indian Cinemas coming up at the Films Division complex in Mumbai.
The Museum of Indian Cinemas, to be put in place by 2013, the year marking the centenary of Indian film industry, when the first and silent epic feature film— Raja Harishchandra by the doyen of Indian cinema Dadasaheb Phalke, was released in 1913.
The museum, aimed at encapsulating the socio-cultural history of India as revealed through the evolution of cinema, will also see the setting up of a state-of-the-art research centre focusing on the effect of cinema on society.
The Rs 110-crore project will cover all aspects of films ranging from costumes to scripts to set designs, as also monographs and film magazines, and is aimed at realising the ubiquitous objectives and activities of the museum, film enthusiasts, film studios, producers, directors, film companies, artistes and curators.
3,000 films to be digitised
Besides exhibits of work of noted directors, producers, institutions for the benefit of general visitors, film enthusiasts, students of film studies, the museum will also house over 3,000 films which will be acquired and digitised, and equal number restored and transferred into negatives.
They would be made available at affordable rates on DVDs for the cinema loving diaspora.
Aimed at catalysing a keen as also educative interest in the field of film movement among the country’s GenX as also inculcate in them a better appreciation of the films, the musuem will also be a window to the country’s ever-expanding soft power — cinema.
Once the museum is up and running, the Centre proposes organising permanent / periodic exhibitions to show the evolution of cinema in India as well as changing phases and thematic pre-occupations of the filmmaker.
The display-cum-exhibition centre will be an added tourist attraction for not only daily groups of local public but also tourists from India and abroad.
The museum will also undertake an ongoing audiovisual documentation of all important personalities that matter in the film scene in the country.
Those who have archival items and artefacts and donate the same to the museum will be specially mentioned against their articles and items they have lent for the purpose of championing the cause of Museum of Indian Cinemas.
The suggestions are to be sent to Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Deputy Secretary K S Rejimon, Room No 662, A Wing Shastri Bhawan, New. Delhi-110001 or through e-mail – ks.rejimon@nic.in or fadesk652@gmail.com
