MUMBAI: Bollywood dominated the 54th National Film Awards with as many as 13 awards.
Rajkumar Hirani‘s Lage Raho Munnabhai swept the National Film Awards for 2006, bagging four prizes. The Sanjay Dutt starrer which brought to fore ‘Gandhigiri‘ by invoking the values of Mahatma Gandhi, won the best popular film “for providing wholesome entertainment”, best screenplay, best lyrics.
Lage Raho also brought the best supporting actor award to Dilip Prabhavalkar. Konkona Sen Sharma was declared the best supporting actress for Omkara.
The best feature film award, however, went to Malayalam film Pulijanmam. Malayalam and Bengali feature films, in fact, got five awards each. Three awards each went to films in Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil.
While the best feature film award in Hindi was given away by Khosla Ka Ghosla, the best feature film award in English went to Quest.
While Bengali film Podokkhep brought veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee award for the best actor, Tamil cinema‘s Priyamani was honoured with the best actress title for Paruthi Veeran.
The award for the best animation feature film, introduced this year, went to the Telugu film Kittu, directed by B Satya and animated by Kodavanti Bharaj. Another award introduced this year, best make-up artist, went to Anil Motiram Palande for Traffic Signal.
Additionally, Madhur Bhandarkar was named the best director for Traffic Signal. Anthony Joseph and Aditya Chopra received the best producer award for Eakantham and Kabul Express respectively.
Divya Chahadkar was given the best child artist award for Antarnad, a Konkani film. Also, the best children‘s film went to Kannada film Care of Footpath, made by nine-year old Kishan S and produced by his mother Shylaja Shrikanth.
All the four awards for Punjabi films went to the same film Waris Shah – Ishq da Waaris, directed by the late Manoj Punj and starring pop star Gurdas Mann.
The best male playback singer was Gurdas Mann for the same. The best female playback singer was Aarti Anklekar Tikekar for Antarnad, which bagged all the four prizes for Konkani.
The best non-feature award went to Bishar Blues by Amitabh Chakraborty. The film also received the audiograohy (Partha Barman) and editing (Amitabh Chakraborty and Amit Debnath) awards.
The first non-feature film of a director went to Andhiyum by Jacob Varghese. The renowned Aribam Syam Sarma, who has won numerous awards, shared the best biographical film award for Guru Laimayum Thambalnagoubi Devi with Minukku by M R Rajan.
The children‘s film Nokpokliba, directed and animated by Meren Imchen, won the best animation award for non-feature film while the best short fiction film award went to Ek Aadesh – Command for Choti by Ramesh Asher who also won the best director award.
Also, the Indira Gandhi award for best first film was taken home by Malayalam film Eakantham and Hindi film Kabul Express.
The best book on cinema award was given to Helen: the life and times of an H-Bomb by Jerry Pinto, published by Penguin Books.
Assamese, Marathi, Oriya, English and Tulu films won one award each.
The feature film jury was chaired by renowned filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta with 13 other members, while the non-feature jury was headed by K Bikram Singh with five other members. The book jury, with three members, was headed by Madhu Jain.
The decision of the awards had been delayed because of a court case by a member of the jury of the 53rd National Film Awards for 2005, but the High Court had vacated the stay last year. Directorate of Film Festival sources told indiantelevision.com that the selection of awards for 2007 were expected to be set in motion within the next few days, and the award-ceremony would be fixed depending upon the convenience of the President.
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