NEW DELHI: President Pratibha Devisingh Patil will present the Dadasaheb Phalke Award to legendary Cinematographer V K Murthy and the National Film Awards for 2008 in a ceremony at the Vigyan Bhavan here on 19 March.
The Bengali film ‘Antaheen’ by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury got the best feature film while ‘AFSPA 1958’ by Haabam Paban Kumar was named as the best non-feature film award for the 2008.
Information and Broadcasting Ministry sources said that the process for selection of the best awards for 2009 will begin shortly thereafter and the awards will be presented by September this year, thus bringing up-to-date the process delayed by a Court case.
Bala who directed the Tamil film ‘Naam Kadauul’ was named best director, while Upendra Limaye and Priyanka Chopra got the best actor and actress awards respectively for the films ‘Jogva’ in Marathi and ‘Fashion’ in Hindi in the 56th National Film Awards announced here this afternoon. Shams Patel won the best child artiste award for the film ‘Thanks Maa’ in Hindi.
The award for the film providing popular and wholesome entertainment went to the Hindi ‘Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!’ by Dibakar Banerjee. The Malayalam film ‘Bioscope’ by K M Madhusudhanam won a special jury award.
Hindi films continued to dominate the feature films, with as many as 13 awards while Marathi films got six (five for one film ‘Jogva’ by Rajeev Patil) and Bengali films got five (four for ‘Antaheen’ which had also featured in the Indian Panorama at the last International Film Festival of India at Goa). Tamil films got three awards, followed by Assamese, Malayalam, and Kannada films with two each, while English, Kokoborok, Tulu, and Oriya got one award each. One award (best film on family values) went to a bilingual English-Gujarati film ‘Little Jijou’ by Sooni Tarporevala.
‘Bollywood Melodies’ by Ganesh Anantharaman got the award for the best book on cinema while the book “The Director’s Mind” by Ujjal Chakraborty got a special mention. The Assamese critic Altaf Mazid and Manipuri critic R K Bidur Singh shared the best film critic award.
The Indira Gandhi award for the first film of a director went to Neeraj Pandey for his gripping Hindi thriller ‘A Wednesday’ while the Nargis Dutt Award for the best feature on national integration was taken by Assamese film ‘Aai Kot Nai’ by Manju Borah.
Interestingly, a film directed by the Indian subsidiary of a foreign production house – Walt Disney- got an award (‘Roadside Romeo’ by Jugal Hansraj as best Animation film) while the film ‘Land Gold Women’ on honour killings in the United Kingdom made by a British-based Indian, Avantika Hari, got the award for best English film.
The Marathi film ‘Jogva’ by Rajeevi Patil got five awards: best film on social values (age old social customs), actor Upendra Limaye, male playback singer Hariharan, and music direction by Ajay and Atul. Playback singer Shreya Ghoshal won the award for both ‘Jogva’ as well as ‘Antaheen’.
‘Antaheen’ also received awards for cinematography by Avik Mukhopadhyay, and lyrics by Anindya Bannerjee and Chandranil Bhattacharya.
‘Fashion’ also received the award for supporting actress Kangana Ranaut. ‘Firaq’ by the Nandita Das who is now chairperson of the Children’s Film Society, India, won two awards: editing by A Sreekar Prasad who had until now won the largest number of national awards for any single film editor, and art direction by Gautam Sen.
The monumental ‘Jodha Akbar’ by Ashutosh Gowarikar won awards for costume design by Neena Lulla and choreography by Chinni Prakash and Rekha Prakash. ‘Rock On’ by Abhishek Kapoor won the Best Hindi film award as well as the supporting actor award for Arjun Rampal.
