Film Heritage Foundation Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur awarded the prestigious Vittorio Borini Award*

New Delhi/Mumbai . National Award winning filmmaker, archivist and Director of Film Heritage Foundation Shivendra Singh Dungarpur was awarded the prestigious Vittorio Borini Award at a special ceremony during the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival held in Bologna, Italy on Friday. The award was given by Gian Luca Farinelli, Director of Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna.

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur has been given this prestigious award for his extraordinary dedication to film preservation and restoration and his significant contribution to saving film heritage in India and the subcontinent. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur receiving the Vittorio Borini Award underlines the global importance of preserving cinematic history.

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur said after receiving the award that "I am very honoured to receive the Vittorio Borini Award, which is a special recognition of my work in film preservation under the aegis of the Film Heritage Foundation founded by me in 2014. Working towards saving the endangered film heritage in our part of the world with limited resources and support for over a decade has been a very challenging task but I am proud to say that we have built a movement for film preservation in a very short span of time not only in India but also in neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka and Nepal and have achieved many milestones ranging from building film archives to world-class restoration of Indian films, bringing classic cinema back to the big screen and preserving film heritage. The journey of the Foundation over the last fifteen years and the appreciation and acknowledgement of this work is truly amazing and it reaffirms our commitment to this cause as there is still a lot to be done." Elaborating on his personal connection to the Cineteca di Bologna and Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival, he said, “I first attended the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival organised by the Cineteca di Bologna in 2010 and it changed my life. I saw the world’s finest cinema beautifully restored and entered a whole new world where people were dedicated to saving and rejuvenating films for posterity. I went in as a filmmaker and cinephile and emerged wearing the other hat of a film archivist and have been going back to Bologna every year since.”

The Vittorio Borini Award, established in 2022 by the Cineteca di Bologna as part of its annual Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, is an internationally recognised award honouring individuals or institutions that have made an exceptional contribution to the preservation, restoration, promotion or dissemination of cinema as cultural heritage. The award is named in honour of Vittorio Borini (1938-2021), the visionary founder and first director of the Cineteca di Bologna, whose efforts were instrumental in transforming it into one of the world's most prominent film archives. The award celebrates a lifelong commitment to cinema preservation, international advocacy for film heritage, leadership in archive creation and programming, and work linking archival and public access to classic and rare films.