P. K. Nair

P. K. Nair Biography

Paramesh Krishnan Nair, shortly called P. K. Nair was a legendary personality known for her lifelong contributions for preserving and archiving Indian films, including many old classics. Helmed as Henri Langlois of India, he founded National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in 1964, and he served as its director too. Nair preserved many landmark movies of Indian cinema such as Dadasaheb Phalke's Raja Harishchandra, Bombay Talkies’ Jeevan Naiya, Achhut Kanya and Kismet, Uday Shankar's Kalpana and many more. When Shivendra Singh Dungarpur made his first documentary film after a decade experience in ad films, his first attempt was - Celluloid Man in 2012, which included the outstanding contributions and life of this legendary archivist. The film was showed in more than 50 international film festivals and received many awards also.

Paramesh Krishnan Nair was born on April 6, 1933 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Nair developed an interest in cinema early in his life. He was fascinated to the mythological movies of 1940s as a child. But he didn’t get support from his family. After completing graduation in science from University of Kerala in 1953, he moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in films. Though he took some acting courses in Mumbai, he realized that his talents can never match the qualities of the great directors like Bimal Roy, Mehboob Khan and Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

Jean Bhownagary of Films Division of India advised him to attend an interview at FTII and he got selected as research assistant in 1961. Worked under many leading names such as Marie Seton and Satish Bahadur, he later joined the newly started separate wing of FTII to archive old films. He got associated with its preliminary works and later permanent associated with it. He dedicated his full life for this purpose. When National Film Archive of India was founded in 1964, he was appointed as assistant curator. He became its director in 1982 and spearheaded nearly three decades to place NFAI among the most reputed archive organizations of the world.

Till his retirement in 1991, he had collected and archived over 12,000 films, of which 8,000 are Indian. Since then he lived in Pune. He passed away on March 4, 2016 at Sahyadri Nursing Home in Pune. Nair was awarded the Satyajit Ray Memorial Award in 2008.

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Updated: March 20, 2016