Bangladesh Film Archive now home to over 5,000 films

The Bangladesh Film Archive, the country's official institution for collecting and preserving cinematic history, now boasts a collection of 5,445 local and international films, including both black-and-white and colour titles.

According to a press release issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Sunday (June 22), the archive currently houses 318 black-and-white films and 5,127 colour films. All materials are stored in six state-of-the-art climate-controlled vaults designed for long-term preservation.

Among the oldest entries in the collection is the iconic 1895 French short film "The Lumière Brothers," considered the birth of cinema itself. The archive's vaults also contain a treasure trove of Bengali film history, including landmark productions such as "Dhrubo" (1934), "Devdas" (1935), and "Mukh O Mukhosh" (1956)—the first full-length Bangla feature film made in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

Other classics in the archive include audience favourites like "E Desh Tomar Amar" (1959), "Asiya" (1960), "Kokhono Asheni" (1961), "Surjasnan" (1962), "Dharapat" (1963), "Sutorang" (1964), "Onek Diner Chena" (1964), "Dui Digonto" (1964), and the fairy-tale-inspired blockbuster "Rupban" (1965).

But the archive isn't just about storing old reels. It also preserves a vast array of film-related materials—books, magazines, lyric collections, posters, flyers, still photographs, original scripts, and other historical documents that help paint a fuller picture of Bangladesh's cinematic past.

In a move to bridge past and present, the Bangladesh Film Archive has also launched an initiative to digitise analog classics. So far, 160 films have been converted into digital formats, with more titles undergoing the same treatment in phases. The goal: to protect cinematic heritage from decay and make it accessible for future generations.

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