National Film Archives Museum

National Film Archives Museum is situated in the heart of the city Central Pune district of Maharashtra State. Founded in 1964, it is one of the largest film archives in Asia. It is located on Law College Road, in the Jayakar Bungalow of the Right Honorable Mukund Ramrao Jaykar, the first Vice Chancellor of Pune and the first Vice Chancellor of the Pune University. The museum was established with the aim to help students who do research on cinema and things related with films like directions, acting, cinematography, film theories etc. It also promotes film culture and makes Indian Cinema more popular outside.

Presently, the museum has 14,678 books related to film and film industry, 14,264 scripts of various films, 10,304 films, 214 regular film periodicals, 5,658 pamphlets, 55,406 photographs, 5,131 wall posters, 1,752 disc records and 31 audio tapes. Enriched with all the classical movies of the world and details, the museum collects award-winning films, Box-office hits, off-beat and critically acclaimed movies, films which are shown in International Film Festivals, films which are the literary adaptations of famous works, documentaries, books written on classic and path-breaking movies, different genres of film-making etc.

Previously, the old building was housed in small sheds and over the years, with a vast dimension of collections with well known films, the museum has been established. Opened a new building complex in 1993, this building has wooden flooring, bookshelves that stretch on almost to the roof and a narrow wooden staircase leads to the second floor. The museum contains 3 basement vaults that can hold sixty-thousand film reels. It is a centrally air-conditioned and a well maintained museum.

It houses a fine collection of all the classic movies and the details on the classic movie makers. t has monographs of famous film makers like Sukhdev, Ritwik Ghatak, Damle and Fatela. The works of great film makers like Dada Saheb Phalke, Debaki Bose, V. Shantaram, P.C. Barua, Mahboob Khan, Sohrab Modi, Guru Dutt, Satyajit Ray, Raj Kapoor, Mrinal Sen, Sukdev, S.S. Vasan, Adoor Gopalakrishna, Shaji N.Karun and many more can be seen here. Among the foregin film-makers explored are the D.W. Griffith, Carl Dryer, Sergei Eienstien, V.I. Pudovkin, Jean Luc Godard, Bergman, Roberto Rosselini, Alexander Dovzkenko, Fritz Lang, Robert Flaherty, Vittorio De Sica, Frederico Fellini, Kenji Mitzoguchi, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Bresson and many more.

These rarest archives are visited by many photographers, researchers, biographers, students, film directors and producers from across the various parts of the world. And every year, they are adding new titles which are not available in the market. The museum also houses 2 theaters - Main Theatre and a Preview Theater. The entire seating capacity of main theater is 330 and for preview theatre is 30 seats. To encourage Indian cinema in India and abroad, the museum also conducts various programmes like Film Circle programme, the screening of Indian and foreign films (at Main Auditorium on every Saturday at 6.30 p.m), screening of some of the rarest movies from all over the world, exhibitions of photographs and posters.