`Celluloid Man` premiers in London, Nair gets Lifetime award

New Delhi: `Celluloid Man`, an ode to Indian film archivist P K Nair will premiere today at the prestigious British Film Institute (BFI) in London, where he will also be conferred a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Shivendra Singh Dungarpur directed film presented at the BFI in association with the South Asian Cinema Foundation (SACF) chronicles 80-year-old Nair`s work in preserving cinematic heritage as the founder-director of the National Film Archive of India in Pune. "We celebrate 100 years of Indian cinema with the screening of an award-winning documentary on the life and work of legendary archivist P K Nair," Director SACF Lalit Mohan Joshi told PTI in an email interview from London. "We are also bestowing Mr Nair with the Foundation`s Lifetime Achievement Award. Shivendra will receive the Award for him and a personal message from Nair saab will also be rendered by Shivendra. He also happens to be one of the founders of SACF in London and we are proud to honour him," Joshi added. The 43-year-old Dungarpur expressed delight at the film being screened at the BFI, the archives of world cinema in the UK. "It`s an extraordinary journey for `Celluloid Man` and Nair saab so far and its a fitting tribute that his life and work will be seen at the prestigious BFI," Dungarpur told reporters. The 160-minute award-winning documentary maps the life and work of Nair`s passion for preserving cinema for posterity and navigates through a stretch of loss-laden history. PTI