Bollywood shares National Award honours with Malayalam, Bengali cinema (Roundup)

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NEW DELHI - Bollywood triumphed at the 57th National Award by winning 15 awards, including the best actor prize that went to megastar Amitabh Bachchan for his performance as a 13-year-old in “Paa”. The other top honours went to the Malayalam film “Kutty Srank” for best film, Rituparno Ghosh for best director for “Abohoman” and Ananya Chatterjee as best actress for the same movie.

After “Ageepath” and “Black”, this the third best actor National Award for Amitabh, 67, who played a progeria patient in R. Balakrishna’s movie “Paa” and spent almost five hours to get his de-aged look.

“Paa” also won the best make-up artist award for Hollywood’s Christien Tinsley and Dominie Till. The best supporting actress went to Arundhati Naag who played Big B’s grandmother in the movie.

Made at a budget of Rs.15 crore, critically acclaimed “Paa”, which was produced by AB Corp and distributed by Reliance Big Pictures, also got best Hindi language film award.

“It was a unanimous decision by the jury… nobody better than Amitabh Bachchan could have performed the role of Auro in ‘Paa’. He stood out in his performance throughout the film. It is not easy to maintain the body language and the voice,” said filmmaker Ramesh Sippy, chairperson, feature films, 57th National Film Awards.

Aamir Khan starrer “3 Idiots”, which was also distributed by Reliance Big Pictures, bagged the National Award for the most popular film providing wholesome entertainment and Swanand Kirkire was declared the best lyricist for penning the song “Behti hawa sa” for the same.

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s “Delhi-6″, which was not so successful in terms of business, won the Nargis Dutt Award for best feature film on national integration. It also won the best production design for Samir Chanda.

Big Pictures production venture “Well Done Abba”, directed by Shyam Benegal, was declared the the best film on social issues at the 57th National Film Awards.

Amit Trivedi got the best music National Award for his compositions in “Dev D”, a modern take on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s “Devdas”.

Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan won the Indira Gandhi Award for best debut film of a director for spreading national integration through sports in his film “Lahore”, while veteran actor Farooque Sheikh won the best supporting actor for the same.

“I was always sure about Farooque Sheikh’s performance and that he will receive the award for the film. But I was not sure about myself and when my name was announced, I was stunned. It is a continued celebration for me,” Chauhan told IANS after the awards were announced.

Vishal Bharadwaj’s dark thriller “Kaminey” was honoured with a special jury award; it was shared by Malayalam movies “Kutty Srank” and “Kerala Verma Pazhassi Raja”.

The best audiography award was divided into three categories - location-sound recordist for Subhash Sahoo for “Kaminey”; re-recording-final track for “3 Idiots” for Anup Dev; and best sound designer to Resul Pookutty for the “Kutty Srank”.

The Malayalam film also got Jayakumar the best costume designer award as well as best cinematography and best screenplay (original) awards for Anjuli Shukla and P.F. Mathews-Harikrishna respectively.

Southern music maestro Illaiyaraja bagged the award for best background score for “Kerala Verma Pazhassi Raja “, which also won the best Malayalam film award.

“Abohoman” also got best editing award for Arghyakamal Mitra and the best Bengali film award.

The best female playback singer award went to Bengali singer Neelanjana Sarkar for “Houseful”. Rupam Islam won the best male singer for the Bengali film “Mahanager@Kolkata”.

Kannada film “Putaani Party” and Malayalam movie “Keshu” won the best children’s film award.

Kishore and Sri Ram shared the best child artist awards for Tamil movie “Pasanga”. The film also won the best dialogue award for Pandiraj and was declared the best Tamil film.

The Telugu movie “Magadheera” won best special effects and best choreography awards for R. Kamal Kannan and K. Siva Shankar respectively.

Best Kannada movie award went to “Kanasemba Kudureyaneri” and “Basundhara” won the best Assamese film award and best Konkani film award went to “Palatadcho Munis”. “Natarang” won the best Marathi film.