Telugu Cinema Takes A Miss At National Awards

The absence of Telugu films on the winners’ list was conspicuous as the 55^th National Film Awards for the year 2007 were announced on September 7, 2009 by the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry. The Golden Lotus Award for the Best Film was picked up by Tamil film Kanchivaram directed by Malayali director Priyadarshan.

Prakash Raj won the Best Actor award for his remarkable performance as a hard core communist in the same movie. Umashree bagged the Best Actress laurel for her fine portrayal of Gulabi in the Girish Kasaravalli directed Kannada movie Gulabi Talkies. This film was also adjudged the best feature film in Kannada.

Padma Vibhushan Adoor Gopalakrishnan, the world famous director from Kerala, won his fifth Golden Lotus for the Malayalam movie Naalu Pennungal in the Best Director category.

While the other three South Indian languages walked away with all the top honours, Tollywood failed to bag even one in any category. In fact, except the award for the Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment won by Geethanjali (Mani Ratnam, 1990) and Sankarabharanam (K Vishwanath, 1980), no other Golden Lotus for the Best Direction, the Best Film or the Best Children’s Film has ever come to Andhra Pradesh.

This year, Chak De! India by Shimit Amin won the Golden Lotus in the popular category, and Taare Zameen Par (TZP) directed by Aamir Khan won the award for the Best Film on Family Welfare.

The mellifluous track ‘Maa’ from TZP bagged two music awards – the Best Male Playback Singer (Shankar Mahadevan) and the Best Lyricist (Prasoon Joshi). Ouseppachan was chosen the Best Music Director for his composition of five songs based on the same Carnatik raga – Shubha Panthuvarali – in the Malayalam film Ore Kadal. Shreya Ghoshal, who drifted away from her melody queen image through the vibrant rendering of ‘Yeh Ishq Haaye’ in the movie Jab We Met, bagged the Best Female Playback Singer award.

“It was an exciting experience judging the feature films this year,” said Sai Paranjpye, chairperson of the jury for feature films, at a press conference held at New Delhi on September 7. “There were a lot of new films by new directors. In fact, there was a bit of a problem adjudging the best new director,” he added. The laurel eventually went to Shivajee Chandrabhushan for his directorial debut Frozen.

Darshan Jariwala, who played Mahatma Gandhi in Gandhi My Father directed by Feroz Abbas Khan, bagged the Best Supporting Actor award. Shefali Shah became his female counterpart for her power packed performance in the Arindam Chaudhuri movie The Last Lear. These movies also won the awards for the Best Screenplay and the Best English Feature Film respectively.

A heartwarming performance

Although Kanchivaram is set against the backdrop of a growing communist philosophy in the 1940s, the basic thread of the movie is a very personal experience of the protagonist Venkadam played by Prakash Raj. The struggles that he goes through to materialize his word that his daughter will be married in a pattupudavai is the crux of this movie. Prakash Raj convincingly portrayed the tragedy of a weaver who creates numerous expensive sarees for the affluent, but cannot afford one for his own daughter. His helplessness at various moments through the film - when he loses his wife and becomes a single father, when he has to forgo his ideals and steal from work and when he finally loses his daughter for whom he struggled all his life - will definitely move anyone humane. No wonder this gifted actor breathed life into this character without even taking remuneration!

Giving life to Gulabi

A veteran actress with close to three decades of experience in theatre and cinema, playing Gulabi must have been cakewalk for Umashree. It is this ease and effortlessness reflected on screen that eventually won her a coveted Silver Lotus for the Best Actress. Throughout the tight narration by the four time Golden Lotus winner Girish Kasaravalli, Gulabi, an innocent Muslim fisherwoman who is addicted to cinema, fails to understand how she is different from the Hindu fisherwomen friends of hers. It is this perplexity that makes her vulnerable, yet extremely lovable. Gulabi Talkies is entirely Umashree’s movie as the title suggests and she has justified it with a soul stirring performance. She has thus become the third actress to bag the Best Actress trophy for a Kannada film after Nandini Bhaktavatsala (Kaadu, 1974) and Tara (Hasina, 2005).