NFAI, FTII to enjoy increased budget booty in 2011-12

The Union budget has brought cheer to two of Pune’s leading national-level film-based organisations — the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) and the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).

The NFAI has been given a grant of Rs20 crore for fiscal 2011-12, while the FTII has been given a grant of Rs9.32 crore.

For the NFAI, who had been given a grant of Rs13.9 crore in 2010-11, this year’s grant of Rs20 crore is a 44% jump. Speaking to DNA on Tuesday, NFAI director Prashant Pathrabe expressed satisfaction at the increase.

“We had made a proposal for Rs25 crore, as we have a lot of restoration and digitisation of films work to be done.”

According to Pathrabe, the NFAI had spent last year’s budget of Rs13.9 crore on digitising 179 old films, restoring 137 rare films and acquiring 262 new films. Besides this, Pathrabe said the institute had also digitised 70% of the targeted ancillary material like film posters, song booklets and film magazines.

Pathrabe said digitisation and restoration of films was a highly specialised job, which had been outsourced to a Mumbai company, while a Hyderabad company was digitising the ancillary data on the NFAI premises in Pune. FTII’s acting director, Iftekhar Ahmed, was happy at being granted a 30% increase in budget this year. Last year, the premier film training institute had been issued a grant of Rs7.2 crore.

Ahmed told DNA the Rs9.32 crore given to the institute this year would be used for constructing new hostels, staff quarters, classrooms, buying new sound and editing equipment and cameras and will also be spent on human resource development activity like recruitment of staff, training and student exchange programmes.