Sita Sings the Blues wins Top Award at IFFLA

“CHILDREN OF THE PYRE” RECEIVES THE JURY PRIZE FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY“NARMEEN” IS NAMED BEST SHORT FILM AND

AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS GO TO “LITTLE ZIZOU” FOR NARRATIVE FEATURE, “SUPERMEN OF MALEGAON” FOR DOCUMENTARY AND “KAVI” FOR SHORT

The 7th Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles announces its 2009 Award winners with Nina Paley’s SITA SINGS THE BLUES as the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature and Nandita Das’s FIRAAQ receiving an Honorable Mention in the category. Rajesh Jala’s CHILDREN OF THE PYRE was named as the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary. Dipti Gogna’s NARMEEN won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short with Sushrut Jain’s ANDHERI receiving an Honorable Mention.

Audience Choice Awards went to Sooni Taraporevala’s LITTLE ZIZOU for Narrative, Faiza Ahmad Khan’s SUPERMEN OF MALEGAON for Documentary and Gregg Helvey’s KAVI for the Short Film category.

Christina Marouda, IFFLA Director, said, “This film festival has been a pivotal one in celebrating the impressive diversity of filmmaking styles and vision from both well known Indian filmmakers and new cinematic voices emerging in the Indian filmmaking community. And the award winners only highlighted that fact. IFFLA also took another important step in establishing itself as a key annual event for the Hollywood and Indian entertainment business community to come together and collaborate.”

JURY AWARDS:

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE: š SITA SINGS THE BLUES
DIR/PROD/SCR/ED: Nina Paley
Cast: Annette Hanshaw, Aseem Chhabra, Manish Acharya, Bhavana Nagulapally, Reena Shah

HONORABLE MENTION: FIRAAQ
DIR: Nandita Das
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Tisca Chopra, Paresh Rawal, Deepti Naval, Raghuveer Yadav

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: CHILDREN OF THE PYRE
DIR: Rajesh Jala

BEST SHORT FILM: NARMEEN
DIR: Dipti Gogna

HONORABLE MENTION: ANDHERI
DIR: Sushrut Jain

AUDIENCE AWARDS:

NARRATIVE: LITTLE ZIZOU
DIR: Sooni Taraporevala
Cast: Boman Irani, Sohrab Ardeshir, Zenobia Shroff, Shernaz Patel, Imaad Shah, John Abraham

DOCUMENTARY: SUPERMEN OF MALEGAON
DIR: Faiza Ahmad Khan

SHORT: KAVI
DIR: Gregg Helvey

The Indian Film festival of Los Angeles kicked off with the Opening Night Gala presentation of Anand Surapur’s THE FAKIR OF VENICE on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at the ArcLight Hollywood Cinemas in Hollywood. The evening’s festivities also included an after party at Crimson & Opera featuring culinary delights by Chakra Cuisine and performances by DJ Sandeep Kumar and Indian/Bollywood Fusion dance and drama team Project Pulse. Opening Night also featured the official launch of CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s and Suneel Gupta’s Kahani Movement. The brothers are co-founders of the film project to capture and share stories from Indians that immigrated to the United States. Kahani accomplishes this by motivating second-generation Indian Americans to pick up a camera, interview their parents, and then post that footage to a central website.

Other highlights included a salute to Bollywood legend Anil Kapoor one of Indian cinema’s most significant and popular personalities which included screenings of Kapoor’s classic films LAMHE (1991) and VIRASAT (1997) as well as the world premiere of the English language version of Kapoor’s production of GANDHI, MY FATHER (2007). š IFFLA also continued its ongoing commitment to supporting and showcasing restored prints of Indian classic films, as it paid homage to BR Chopra by screening his classic, NAYA DAUR.

The presentation of the 2009 IFFLA Industry Leadership Award to Richard Fox and Amit Khanna took place on Thursday, April 23 at the House of Blues in West Hollywood. Fox is the Executive Vice President of Warner Bros. International and heads up all of Warner Bros.’ non-US initiatives in all phases of the entertainment industry. Khanna is the Chairman of Reliance BIG Entertainment, the media arm of the $75 billion Ambani Group that recently completed its purchase of Dreamworks and announced that it would spend $1 billion on the Indian film and entertainment business. Presenting the awards were Walt Disney International Chairman Andy Bird and Deborah Bothun, entertainment media and communications advisory leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. The event also included a musical performance by Gingger Shankar.

The festival closed with the IFFLA Closing Night Gala presentation of YES MADAM, SIR on Sunday, April 26 at ArcLight Hollywood. A documentary profiling Dr. Kiran Bedi, the first woman to join the Indian Police Service and a controversial and inspiring figure in India. Dr. Bedi attended the festival as a guest of honor that evening along with director, Doneman. The evening concluded with an after party at The Cabana Club, which once again featured culinary delights by Chakra Cuisine and performances by DJ Sandeep Kumar and Indian/Bollywood Fusion dance and drama team Project Pulse.

The 2009 IFFLA lineup showcased 21 features (16 narrative and 5 documentary) and 16 shorts for a total of 37 films representing 5 countries.

Posted by on Apr 27 2009. Filed under Features & Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry