A HEREFORDSHIRE company has been named top at a national industry awards event.

Herefordshire’s Huntley Film Archives has been awarded the title of Company of the Year at the annual industry awards in London. The 20th annual FOCAL International Awards were held on June 15 at the prestigious De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms in London.

The event, hosted by the talented comedian Ed Byrne, celebrated excellence in the audiovisual industry, honouring remarkable achievements in production, restoration & preservation, and personnel.

Huntley Film Archives, also celebrating its 40th birthday this year, was recognised as one of the world’s leading and growing film collections, exceeding 80,000 individual titles dating from the earliest days of film.

Managing Director Amanda Huntley said: “We are delighted and proud to receive such an accolade from our peers in the industry for our dedication to preserving and making accessible filmed history”.

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The collection is a treasure trove and window into an otherwise lost world.

An invaluable resource for film and TV production companies in the UK and overseas, Huntley Film Archives material frequently appears on our TV screens via broadcasters such as the BBC and Netflix in news items, documentaries and feature films.

Footage supplied by the company will have been seen in several recent tributes to Queen Elizabeth II, and also in documentaries such as in ‘Simon Schama’s History of Now’ and entertainment programmes like ‘Long Lost Family’.

The library supplies film for use in museums, corporate promotional videos, advertising, websites, and for cinematic release of documentaries about leading sports stars, notably Diego Maradona, and bands including the Rolling Stones.

Huntley Film Archives is the largest independently owned film archive in the country. It continues to grow with 10 to 20 new films being scanned daily to HD and made available for commercial users to pay to access and for the public to view free of charge via the website.

The company has been keen to expand into more overseas markets and has attended tradeshows in France, Germany and the U.S.A. and visited national film archives in Asia. These visits have brought Huntley Film Archives to the attention of producers and researchers new to the company.

Huntley Film Archives is based in the village of Ewyas Harold. The collections of 16mm and 35mm film are housed in purpose-built vaults on site.

The company plans to expand and create additional storage vaults in the buildings on site. This will involve major investment but at the end of the process this small company in rural Herefordshire will house collections to rival those of the biggest names in the industry.