Shivendra Singh Dungarpur receives prestigious Vittorio Boarini award for film preservation

Filmmaker, archivist and director of the Film Heritage Foundation, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, was conferred with the esteemed Vittorio Boarini Award at a special ceremony on June 27, 2025, during the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy. This prestigious award recognises Dungarpur’s extraordinary dedication to the cause of film preservation and restoration, and his pivotal role in building a movement to save film heritage across India and the subcontinent.



The Vittorio Boarini Award, instituted in 2022 by the Cineteca di Bologna as part of its annual Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, is an international recognition honouring individuals or institutions who have made exceptional contributions to the preservation, restoration, promotion or dissemination of cinema as cultural heritage. It is named in tribute to Vittorio Boarini (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 foremost film archives. The award celebrates a lifelong commitment to cinema preservation, international advocacy for film heritage, leadership in archive building and programming and work that bridges archival and public access to classic and rare films.



Talking about the award, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur said, "I am deeply honoured to be the recipient of the Vittorio Boarini Award, named after an extraordinary man who founded the Cineteca di Bologna, an institution and its people that has had a profound impact on me." He credits the Cineteca di Bologna as the inspiration behind the establishment of the Film Heritage Foundation, noting its integral role in the foundation's journey over the past fifteen years.



Further elaborating on his personal connection to the Cineteca di Bologna and the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival he added, "I first attended the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival conducted by Cineteca di Bologna in 2010 and it changed my life. I saw the best of world cinema beautifully restored, and entered a whole new world where people were dedicated to saving films for posterity and bringing them back to life again. I went as a filmmaker and cinephile and emerged wearing another hat of a film archivist and have been going back to Bologna every year since then."