About
To conserve, preserve and restore India's moving-image heritage and to build awareness of the language of cinema.
Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) is the only non-governmental organisation in India dedicated to film preservation, founded in 2014 by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur. It restores endangered Indian classics to world-festival standard, archives films and memorabilia, runs the country's principal film-preservation training workshops, curates public screenings, and advocates for India's cinematic heritage - with a deliberate emphasis on regional cinema, not Bollywood alone.
Born from Dungarpur's alarm at the loss of India's films — some 70% of those made before 1950 are gone — FHF set out to do what no Indian institution was doing: restore films to international standard and train people to do the work. It became an associate member of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) in 2015 and built the Film Preservation & Restoration Workshops India with global experts.
Its restorations have premiered at the world's leading festivals — Bimal Roy's 'Do Bigha Zamin' (with The Criterion Collection, Venice 2025), Satyajit Ray's 'Aranyer Din Ratri' (with Scorsese's Film Foundation, Cannes), Aravindan's 'Thamp', and 'Sholay – The Final Cut' — drawn deliberately from across India's languages and regions, from Manipur and Kerala to Bengal. From 2025 it began regular screenings of restored classics at Mumbai's Regal Cinema.
Founding & Leadership
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur is a National Award-winning filmmaker and archivist whose documentary 'Celluloid Man' (2012), about National Film Archive founder P.K. Nair, awakened him to the scale of India's film loss. In 2014 he founded the Film Heritage Foundation - the only non-governmental organisation working in film preservation in India. He is Festival Director of the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, has served on the FIAF Executive Committee, and in 2025 received the Vittorio Boarini Award from the Cineteca di Bologna for a decade of preservation work.
A not-for-profit foundation led by its Founder-Director.
Leadership & Trustees
Initiatives & Portfolio
World-standard restoration of endangered Indian classics across languages - e.g. Do Bigha Zamin, Aranyer Din Ratri, Thamp, Sholay – The Final Cut - premiered at Cannes, Venice and Berlin.
Conservation and archiving of films and film-related memorabilia, with detailed inventory and classification.
India's principal training programme in film conservation, run with international experts, building the country's first generation of film conservators.
Curated programmes and regular screenings of restored classics, including at Mumbai's Regal Cinema from 2025.
Associate membership of FIAF and sustained advocacy for film-heritage policy and awareness in India.
Impact & Metrics
Partnerships & Network
Partner institutions
Funders & patrons
Restoration partnerships with Scorsese's Film Foundation, Criterion/Janus, and the Cineteca di Bologna.
Credentials & Compliance
CSR-eligible · Schedule VII(v) - art & culture
A young, founder-led not-for-profit with strong international credibility (FIAF, Scorsese's Film Foundation, Criterion). Specific 80G/12A/FCRA particulars are [Data Not Publicly Available]. The work is irreplaceable and time-critical - film stock degrades - which makes it a high-urgency, high-impact funding case; the main institutional risk is its dependence on a single founder.
A natural CSR partner under Schedule VII(v) for cinema as cultural heritage; its irreplaceable, time-sensitive work makes it a high-urgency funding case.
Recognition
The only NGO working in film preservation in India; restorations selected by Cannes, Venice and Berlin; founder honoured with the Vittorio Boarini Award (2025).
[Atlas Assessment] Film Heritage Foundation is, almost single-handedly, the reason India has a film-preservation practice at all. By restoring classics to a standard that earns selection at Cannes and Venice, training the country's first cohort of film conservators, and insisting on India's full regional and linguistic range rather than Hindi cinema alone, it has created an entire field. Given that the majority of early Indian cinema is already lost, its work is both irreplaceable and racing the clock.
FHF scores high on innovation, ecosystem influence and impact — it built film preservation in India from nothing and operates at world standard. Its reach is specialised, amplified by global festival visibility. Two honest caveats define it: it is young (a decade), and it is profoundly founder-dependent — Shivendra Singh Dungarpur essentially is the field in India, which is both its credibility and its key-person risk. For a funder, the urgency is the headline: unlike a monument, a degrading film cannot wait.