Celluloid Man is a 2012 documentary film directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur that explores the life and work of legendary Indian archivist P. K. Nair, founder of the National Film Archive of India and guardian of Indian cinema.
He has influenced generations of Indian film students especially the Indian New Wave filmmakers such as Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ketan Mehta, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Jahnu Barua, Girish Kasaravalli, John Abraham (director), Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Kundan Shah.
The film is woven with interviews of several filmmakers and film personalities who have been influenced directly and indirectly by P. K. Nair, among them Krzysztof Zanussi, Lester James Peries, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Gulzar, Basu Chatterjee, Naseeruddin Shah, Kamal Haasan, Girish Kasaravalli, Jahnu Barua, Jaya Bachchan, Dilip Kumar, Saira Banu, Sitara Devi, Santosh Sivan, Rajkumar Hirani, Shyam Benegal, Mahesh Bhatt, Yash Chopra, Ramesh Sippy, Mrinal Sen and Surama Ghatak.
Besides the interviews, the film has rare footage from early Indian masterpieces like Raja Harishchandra, Kaliya Mardan, Gallant Hearts, Marthanda Verma, Jamai Babu, Fearless Nadia, Sant Tukaram, Achut Kanya, Kismat, Chandralekha and Kalpana - all films that were archived and thus saved by Nair.
The film has been shot in Warsaw, Colombo, Pune, Nasik, Mumbai, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Heggodu, Bengaluru and Kolkata, and eleven cinematographers worked on it: Santosh Thundiyil, K. U. Mohanan, Abhik Mukhopadhyay, P. S. Vinod, H. M. Ramachandra, R. V. Ramani, Vikas Sivaraman, Mahesh Aney and Kiran Deohans.