The AFA is an active member of SEAPAVAA, working collaboratively with other regional archives to set standards for preservation and to advocate for better archival policies within governments.
Pune is the unofficial capital of Indian cinema preservation. The NFAI holds the only surviving prints of Dadasaheb Phalke’s silent masterpieces. However, the scale of India’s output (over 1,000 films a year in multiple languages) makes their job a Sisyphean task. The Asian film archive ecosystem relies heavily on NFAI’s efforts to save regional language films (Tamil, Bengali, Marathi) that never had a "pan-Indian" release. asian film archive
Based in Pune, NFAI fights an uphill battle against India’s humid climate and the "single-use" mentality of old Bollywood producers. They recently unearthed Kisan Kanya (1937), a Hindi film shot entirely in color, which was thought to be extinct. The AFA is an active member of SEAPAVAA,
To understand the importance of the AFA, one must first understand the fragility of the medium. Unlike a stone tablet or an oil painting, film is notoriously ephemeral. In the tropical humidity of Southeast Asia, celluloid decays rapidly, turning into "vinegar syndrome"—a chemical breakdown that smells of acetic acid and erases history frame by frame. Pune is the unofficial capital of Indian cinema preservation
For decades, Asian cinema—particularly the works of Southeast Asian New Wave directors and obscure independent filmmakers—was at risk of vanishing entirely. The AFA stepped in not merely as a storage facility, but as a site of rescue. Its climate-controlled vaults are a sanctuary for reels that might otherwise have ended up in a landfill or a dusty, water-damaged attic.
But the archive does not hoard these treasures in darkness. Its mission is two-fold: preservation and dissemination.
The AFA was founded in January 2005 by a group of film enthusiasts, researchers, and industry professionals led by filmmaker and scholar Dr. Jan Uhde and archivist Viktoria Huhn. Recognizing that a vast amount of Asian cinematic history was disappearing due to a lack of proper archival infrastructure in the region, they established the AFA to fill this gap. In 2014, the organization was granted charity status and Institutions of a Public Character (IPC) status in Singapore, solidifying its role as a non-profit entity reliant on public and private funding.