Mumbai: Founder director of Pune-based National Film Archive of India, P K Nair, passed away on Friday after a brief illness. He was 86. Nair died at a private hospital in Pune this morning, where he was admitted last week, NFAI sources said.
Paramesh Krishnan Nair dedicated his life to preservation of films and building its collection at the NFAI, and was instrumental in archiving several landmark Indian movies.
These included Dadasaheb Phalke's 'Raja Harishchandra' and 'Kaliya Mardan', Bombay Talkies' films such as 'Jeevan Naiya', 'Bandhan', 'Kangan', 'Achhut Kanya' and 'Kismet', S S Vasan's 'Chandralekha' and Uday Shankar's 'Kalpana'.
Nair joined the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune as a research assistant in 1961, and went on to play a key role in the setting up of the NFAI in 1964. He was appointed assistant curator in 1965, and continued with the NFAI till 1991. By the time he retired as NFAI director, he had acquired a whopping 12,000 films for the archive. Of these, 8,000 were Indian and the rest foreign films. His life and work has been immortalised in the documentary "Celluloid Man", made by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.
"Nair sahab's demise is an unparallelled loss to the Indian film industry and the film archiving movement," FTII Director Prashant Pathrabe told PTI.
"He was passionate about conservation of films. The best tribute to him would be to implement the film conservation element of the National Film Heritage Mission of NFAI in the best possible way," Pathrabe said.
