AV Archiving for North-East India

India has been home to tens of thousands of communities, languages and cultures, and to thousands of religious practices. The northeastern region of India has housed hundreds of indigenous communities for millenia, all of whom practise their own unique cultures and religions, and speak their own languages and dialects. There has been an impressive rise in the study and documentation of the region and the ethnic communities throughout the previous few decades because of the collective sense of responsibility shared by scholars, scientists, artists and historians to document and preserve the cultures and practices in the region which have been inherited orally for as long they have existed, and which are therefore prone to quick assimilation into wider conventions. One of the prime endeavours of The Northeast India Audiovisual (AV) Archive is to preserve the audio-visual heritage which represents the communities of Northeast India in their truest essence as far as possible.

The Northeast India AV Archive is a public audiovisual archive established in 2019 with the support of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Japan, and is located in the Department of Mass Media, St Anthony's College Shillong. The endeavours of the archive are aligned with its goal to record and preserve memories and legacies which are being fast forgotten, through its collection and conservation of audiovisual materials, and its effort to concretise the narratives and stories of people belonging to different communities in the region. The Northeast India AV Archive has been making its approach to raise awareness about the significance of archives and memory institutions highly people-oriented, by  organising film festivals and photo exhibitions with the intention to help people realise the value of audiovisual heritage in the acquisition of knowledge about tradition and culture, and in reviving them too. It endeavours to make its access a holistic experience for all its users, online and offline both.

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The Northeast India AV Archive is a repository of newsreels, films, photographs, newspapers, documents, audio recordings, and the akin, which have been retrieved by our conscious effort, or which have been contributed by people for safekeeping and preservation.

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We invite people and organisations to access the materials available at The Northeast India AV Archive, either online or offline, to contribute to our collection, and also avail digitisation facilities for audio-visual materials.