Film Heritage Foundation
Film Heritage Foundation is a non-profit organization, based in Mumbai, India, dedicated to film preservation, restoration and archiving of neglected classical and historic Indian films. It was founded by filmmaker, archivist and restorer Shivendra Singh Dungarpur in 2014, inspired by the efforts of film scholar and archivist P. K. Nair.
The foundation's aim is to salvage and restore historic celluloid films, as out of 1700 silent films made in India in the early 1900s, only five or six survive; and from the 250 films produced between 1931 and 1941, only 15 are in existence. In 2015, the foundation received funds from private businesses and Bollywood actors to restore some of the most "endangered films" of Indian cinema, including the first Indian sound film Alam Ara.
The foundation also runs education programmes and regularly holds workshops on film conservation and preservation around the country. In 2019, the foundation received the memorabilia of the Indian actor Raj Kapoor for preservation. The foundation initiated an oral history project in 2018, in which it interviewed at length, for a permanent historical and cultural record, some of the most important filmmakers of India, including Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Mani Ratnam. The foundation in the past has been supported by Sir Ratan Tata Trust.
