Kamal Haasan on Friday requested the Union and State governments to provide funds to improve the digital archival library. "This would help preserve old and rare movies," said the Ulaganayagan at the valedictory of the two-day FICCI media and entertainment digital conclave in Chennai.

Kamal, who is the chairman of the conclave, spoke of the conversion of old films contained in negative film format to digital format by Real Images free of cost. He said that 3,500 old films of different languages (including a few of his films) have been digitized and securely preserved in a one petabyte memory capacity over the last five years.

The digital library was set up by FICCI and has around 3,500 films in all Indian languages. About 1,000 gigabytes of storage space has been created in the last six months. "We have done this with private funds but to enhance the capacity, we need government funds," said Kamal.

Senthil Kumar, co-founder of Qube cinema and a committee member of the FICCI media and entertainment digital conclave, Kiran Reddy, managing director of Sathyam Cinemas and CBFC chairperson Leela Samson also spoke at the event.

Click Here To See Kamal Haasan @ FICCI Closing Ceremeony