FIAF, the International Federation of Film Archives, presented its 2024 FIAF Award to acclaimed German filmmaker Wim Wenders during a special ceremony in Budapest, Hungary, on 19 September 2024 as part of the 7th Budapest Classics Film Marathon. The presentation ceremony took place at the Uránia National Film Theatre and was hosted by the National Film Institute Hungary – Film Archive, a Member of FIAF since 1955.
Since 2001, when the inaugural FIAF award was presented to Martin Scorsese for his groundbreaking advocacy for the cause of film preservation, FIAF has bestowed its annual award to celebrate a film personality external to the archival world whose experience and personal commitment to cinema underlines FIAF’s missions. Past recipients include some of the greatest figures of world cinema: Manoel de Oliveira (2002), Ingmar Bergman (2003), Geraldine Chaplin (2004), Mike Leigh (2005), Hou Hsiao-hsien (2006), Peter Bogdanovich (2007), Nelson Pereira dos Santos (2008), Rithy Panh (2009), Liv Ullmann (2010), Kyoko Kagawa (2011), Agnès Varda (2013), Jan Švankmajer (2014), Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi (2015), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (2016), Christopher Nolan (2017), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2018), Jean-Luc Godard (2019), Walter Salles (2020), Amitabh Bachchan (2021), Tilda Swinton (2022), and Guillermo del Toro (2023).
Photo: © NFI Hungary
Wim Wenders (born in Düsseldorf, 1945) is considered one of the most renowned representatives of contemporary cinema. Wenders is also an acclaimed photographer whose work is shown worldwide. In 2012, Wim and Donata Wenders founded the non-profit Wim Wenders Foundation, which brings together his cinematic, photographic, and literary life’s work to make it permanently accessible to the public. The Foundation is also committed to film education and supporting young talent in the field of innovative, cinematic storytelling with the Wim Wenders Grant. Wim Wenders is a founding member of the European Film Academy, and served as its president from 1996 to 2020. In 2015 he was honoured for his lifetime achievement with the Golden Bear of the Berlin International Film Festival. In 2022 he received the Praemium Imperiale – also known as “the Nobel Prize of the fine arts” – from the Japan Art Association.
Earlier this year, FIAF’s Executive Committee unanimously decided to support the nomination of Wim Wenders for the 2024 FIAF Award, which had been put forward by three eminent personalities of our international network of film archives: Frédéric Maire, Director of the Cinémathèque Suisse, Rainer Rother, Director of the Deutsche Kinemathek, and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Director of the Film Heritage Foundation. Their supporting statements emphasized Mr. Wenders’ long-time passion for, and knowledge of, world cinema and film history, ever since he attended the screenings at the Cinémathèque française in the 1960s. This unique cinephilia has been reflected in his writings about cinema, in the film references and tributes to other great filmmakers in many of his films, and even in the classics of world cinema that he frequently introduces to audiences at festivals and cinematheques. They also noted his great personal dedication to the preservation, restoration, and dissemination of his own unique body of work, through the innovative Foundation he established in 2012. Finally, they highlighted his well-known appreciation of the work done by film archives and cinematheques of the global FIAF network (a community in which he has many friends) to rescue, preserve, and provide access to the world’s film heritage for years to come.
National Film Institute Hungary – Film Archive Director György Ráduly, who hosted the presentation ceremony, opened the proceedings by declaring: “It is a great joy to host the 2024 Award ceremony in Budapest. Since 2017 we have been working devotedly on the modernization of the film archive, the preservation of analog laboratory technology and professions, and the development of audiences for classic movies and cinema culture, creating one of Europe’s biggest festivals of restored films. We are deeply honoured that Wim Wenders accepted our invitation to come to Budapest for the reception of the Award and the retrospective program of his films. We are also grateful for the important work he is doing for the promotion of the mission of film preservation”.
FIAF Secretary-General Tiago Baptista, who presented Wim Wenders with the FIAF Award trophy – a pure silver film can made by a silver workshop in Mexico with the assistance of Filmoteca UNAM, a FIAF Member – said: “In the name of the FIAF community, I am honoured to present Wim Wenders with the 2024 FIAF Award, as an acknowledgment of his longstanding commitment to cinema and its history, in recognition of our shared vision that film art and film preservation are, in fact, two sides of the same coin and that one cannot exist without the other, and in anticipation of all the time, work, and energy we know he’ll continue to dedicate to the global cause of film heritage.”.
After accepting this unique accolade from the worldwide community of film archives and archivists, Wim Wenders said, “I want to thank FIAF for this great honor. And I am not just calling this an ‘honor’ as a routine. I wouldn’t be standing in front of you as the filmmaker I am, if I hadn’t discovered cinema as an all-comprehensive art form - on the screen of a film archive. Over the years I have spent time at the Cinémathèque française in Paris and in other similar institutions in Berkeley, Berlin, Tokyo, and other parts of the world, and each time I've had the same feeling of being inside of Noah's Ark. It is in these archives that the huge 20th century treasure that we call cinema is being preserved and passed on to future generations. With more than seven decades of tradition and experience, FIAF and its members are the right people and institutions to whom we entrust our film heritage.”
Wenders’ full acceptance speech will be published in the October 2024 issue of the Journal of film Preservation.
This very special evening was fittingly concluded with a screening of the film A Trick of the Light (Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky), Wim Wenders’ personal tribute to German film pioneers Max and Emil Skladanowsky. The restored film was accompanied by French composer Laurent Petitgand’s fantastic music performed live.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About FIAF
FIAF, the International Federation of Film Archives, is a global organization dedicated to the preservation of, and access to, the world’s moving-image heritage. Founded in 1938 by four of the first film archives, 86 years later FIAF brings together 176 film heritage institutions in 80 countries. FIAF fosters solidarity, exchange, and co-operation between the most prominent cinematheques and film archives worldwide.
FIAF published and strives to uphold the Code of Ethics for film preservation and standards for all areas of film archive work, promotes the creation of moving image archives in countries which lack them, encourages the collection and preservation of documents and materials relating to the cinema, seeks the improvement of the legal context in which archives operate, ensures the permanent availability of material from the collections for study and research by the wider community, and develops co-operation between members to ensure the international availability of all films and documents.
FIAF also oversees an ambitious Training & Outreach programme, which runs or takes part in training events for professionals of the moving image archiving field all over the world, and provides assistance to new archives or those at risk.
FIAF publishes the biannual Journal of Film Preservation (a key platform for discussions on all theoretical, technical, and historical aspects of moving image archival activities), the International Index to Film Periodicals and the Treasures from the Film Archives database – two research tools dear to scholars and researchers around the world, as well as a wealth of other resources, many of which can be found in digital form on the FIAF website (www.fiafnet.org).
FIAF is an official partner of UNESCO (with consultative status) and is a member of the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA), which represents the interests of worldwide professional archive organizations having interests in audiovisual materials and co-ordinates the celebrations of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage each year on 27 October.
Contact: Christophe Dupin, FIAF Senior Administrator c.dupin@fiafnet.org
About the National Film Institute Hungary – Film Archive
The Hungarian film archive, founded in 1957, is operating as a public collection since 1992. Its main tasks include the safeguarding, conservation, research, restoration and publishing of the national film heritage and all related documentation.
As a division of the National Film Institute, Film Archive carries out domestic and international distribution of the national film assets and their utilization in public education as a core task. Alongside continuous development, it ensures the highest possible standard of preservation, the continuous digitization and restoration of the collection.
In addition to the preservation of feature films, NFI Film Archive is also charged with the comprehensive collection of newsreels, documentaries, commercials, educational, scientific, report, propaganda, and amateur films generated in the course of Hungarian film history. The most important goal of research conducted by the institution is to include all Hungarian or Hungarian-related motion picture material created outside television production in the national collection.
The NFI Film Archive primarily conducts its services and publishes its content on the basis of documentation drafted and constantly developed by it. It not only has a film collection but a significant specialist library and documentation collection linked to specific film productions, which includes all original documents arising during film production and distribution. https://nfi.hu/en/film-archive
Contact: Csaba Papp, NFI Hungary Public Relations papp.csaba@nfi.hu
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