Films Division of India

FDI was divided into four wings; these are Production, Distribution, International Documentary and Short Film Festival. The Division produces documentaries/news magazines from its headquarters in Mumbai, films on defence and family welfare from New Delhi and featurettes focussing on rural India from the regional centres at Calcutta now (Kolkata) and Bangalore. In 1990, it was started at the annual Mumbai International Film Festival, for documentary, short and animation films at Mumbai. It housed a museum of cinema, the National Museum of Indian Cinema (NMIC), inaugurated on 19 January 2019.

In March 2022, it was merged with National Film Development Corporation.

History

Established in 1948, FDI followed the model of state controlled and monopolized production, distribution and exhibition of documentary films, news reels and propaganda films, soon transforming into the biggest producer documentary and short film production in the country. For decades to come, FDI would produce thousands of documentaries and newsreels that would reach as many as 25 million Indians a week. As James Beveridge of the National Film Board of Canada would later observe, FDI “delivered a body of documentaries and newsreels which must constitute the largest peace-time programme of public information films ever seen among the democratic countries.”