Dr Bijukumar Damodaran adds another feather to M-town’s cap

Bijukumar Damodaran alias Dr. Biju is a three-time National Award winner and one of Kerala’s most vociferous voices, speaking on contemporary issues plaguing society. The director has now received a rare honour which he shares through his Facebook page, “The Asian Film Archive (AFA) Singapore is preserving all the feature films I have directed. Really a big honor and a prestigious accomplishment for my 14-year-old film career. This is the first time that the AFA is archiving films made by a South Indian filmmaker. I have done four films in 35 mm film print and six films in Digital medium. All these works will be preserved by the AFA. The films will be preserved forever for future generation. It will live long... The films were available for all academic purpose around the world. This would be a great achievement for Malayalam cinema too (I hope so...).” Dr Biju thanks Mark Chan (renowned musician), Joachim Ng (Director, Singapore Film Commission) and Chew Tee Pao (Archivist, Asian Film Archive) for making this possible.

Shedding more light on the AFA, he pens, “The AFA collects and preserves culturally, historically or aesthetically significant Asian works. The AFA preserves Asian films to encourage scholarly research on film, and promote a wider critical appreciation of this art form. The archive has collected more than 2,000 titles, with a focus on classic Asian films and contemporary critically acclaimed independent works from Southeast Asia. The films will be made available for reference to the public, as well as scholars/researchers within the AFA’s reference collection housed in the National Library and the library@esplanade, and also to permit for non-commercial use in the AFA’s outreach and educational activities.”

The Asian Film Archive is an affiliate of the International Federation of Film Archives and the Southeast Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association.