NFAI archives vintage Telugu films

450 glass slides represent the pictorial history of early Telugu cinema from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s
The National Film Archive of India has added more than 450 glass slides of films to its collection. These glass slides represent the pictorial history of early Telugu cinema from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s and feature lovely frames tracing the gravitas of Telugu films during the early decades of Indian talkie.
Last year, too, the NFAI had acquired nearly 400 glass slides.Presently, the NFAI has more than 2,000 such glass slides of Hindi, Gujarati and Telugu films in its collection.
These glass slides are in black and white covering more than six dozen Telugu films from 1939 to 1955. The acquisition includes glass slides from many important films like V.V. Rao’s trendsetting social drama about widow remarriage ‘Malli Pelli’ (1939), B.N. Reddi’s ‘Vande Mataram’ (1939), starring Chittor V. Nagaiah, popular swashbuckling hit ‘Keelu Gurram’ (1949), featuring Akkineni Nageshwara Rao and Anjali Devi, another hit N. T. Rama Rao-starrer ‘Daasi’ (1952), critically acclaimed adaptation of Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s classic Devdas Vedantam Raghavaiah’s ‘Devadasu’ (1953), starring Akkineni Nageswara Rao, Savitri and Lalitha in the central roles and many more. All these glass slides are in black and white covering 70 Telugu films from 1939 to 1955.
The National Film Archive of India (NFAI) was established as a media unit of the Ministry of Information in 1964. It is a member of the International Federation of Film Archives. With headquarters at Pune, Maharashtra, NFAI has three regional offices at Bangalore, Calcutta and Thiruvananthapuram. Its three principal objectives are to trace, acquire and preserve for posterity the heritage of Indian cinema, to classify, document data and undertake research relating to films and to act as a centre for the dissemination of film culture.
Prakash Magdum, Director, NFAI, said, “Glass slides are exquisite records of Indian cinematic heritage, and we are happy to preserve these in our archival collection. In the wake of fast-changing technologies having these glass slides in such huge numbers is a rare and significant discovery. I appeal to all film lovers to come forward and deposit film footages, photographs, posters, lobby cards and other such material so that it can be preserved.”