World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2021: Here are some museums to visit on this special occasion

The World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is marked annually on 27 October to raise awareness about the importance of audiovisual documents and the need to preserve them. The day is aimed at making these resources accessible to the public while stressing the urgency to conserve them for future generations.

The theme this year is "Your Window to the World" to underscore the importance of how audiovisual material help us gain access to past events and voices.

What is audiovisual heritage?

Audiovisual heritage represents objects such as moving images and documents, which provide a glimpse of lives and cultures all over the world. The materials are a part of the collective memory of the world since they represent a valuable source of knowledge as well as a window to the past.

In India, you can mark the occasion of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage by visiting any of the following museums to gain importance on how such resources are an important part of accessing the past-

National Film Archive of India (NFAI), Pune:

With a vast collection comprising lakhs of film reels, the NFAI is one of India’s most extensive film preservation and conservation repositories. It also offers about 8,000 minutes of audio interviews of veteran film artists on its website.

Partition Museum, Amritsar:

The museum houses thousands of oral stories of the generation who lived through the partition of the country. It offers a glimpse of those times as well as possess archival recordings of events such as the Khilafat Movement and Non-Cooperation Movement.

National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi:

Visitors can enjoy a first-of-its-kind audio-visual guide app at the NGMA which lets people discover modern Indian artworks and listen to anecdotes about the same on their smartphones.

National Gandhi Museum, New Delhi:

It gives visitors a trove of information about the life of the Father of the Nation, including the 1941 documentary Mahatma Gandhi: 20th Century Prophet by AK Chettiar.

Jaisalmer War Museum:

The museum has an immersive ‘Light and Sound Show’ that chronicles the sacrifice and bravery of the Indian Armed Forces. It also has an audiovisual theatre that screens movies about the historic Battle of Laungewala.

History of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage:

The World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is celebrated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) along with the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA). The organisations honour those individuals and institutions who have played an important part in preserving audiovisual heritage across the world.

The day was first marked in 2005 to honour the adoption of the Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images at the 21st General Conference of UNESCO.