Curtains Fell after the announcement of Award winners
Nina Paley’s film SITA SINGS THE BLUES was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature while Nandita Das’s FIRAAQ received an Honorable Mention in that 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 film while Sushrut Jain’s ANDHERI received an Honorable Mention.
Audience Choice Awards were conferrred on:
Sooni Taraporevala for her feature film LITTLE ZIZOU
Faiza Ahmad Khan for his documentary SUPERMEN OF MALEGAON
Gregg Helvey for his short film KAVI
Christina Marouda, IFFLA Director, said, “This film festival has played a pivotal role 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. 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.”
Here are the detailed credits of award winning feature films
JURY AWARDS:
AUDIENCE AWARDS:
2009 IFFLA JURY MEMBERS were :
For Feature Films
PAUL Federbush - a veteran film Production and Development Executive from Hollywood (Acquired the Oscar winner “Slumdog Millionaire” for Warner Independent Pictures) ;Rana Joy Glickman—an Internationally acclaimed Theatre woman and film producer ;Matt Holzman :an award-winning public radio arts and culture reporter, Richard Shepard - an Emmy-Winning director and Gill Dennis - a Master Filmmaker-in-Residence at the American Film Institute Conservatory.
Documentary Jury
Mark Jonathan Harris--an Academy-Award winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, novelist, and film professor; Michael Lumpkin –Executive Director of the International Documentary Association and David Tenzer - an entertainment lawyer, business consultant and content producer.
Shorts Jury
Rupak Ginn- an actor graduated from Harward ( Supporting actor in Mira Nair’s “The Namesake”), Linda “O.” Olszewski – Co-Head of Global acquisitions for SHORTS INTERNATIONAL, Hebe Tabachnik- a short film programmer and consultant for International Festivals.
Detailed HIGH LIGHTS of the Fest
The Indian Film festival of Los Angeles had 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 .
The evening’s festivities also included an after party at Crimson & Opera featuring 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.
A SALUTE TO BOLLYWOOD ACTOR ANIL KAPOOR
Anil Kapoor DOES NOT NEED INTRO AS one of Indian cinema’s most significant and popular personalities. He was saluted by IFFLA by screening his significant films which included classic films LAMHE (1991) and VIRASAT (1997) as well as the world premiere of the English language version of Kapoor’s production GANDHI, MY FATHER (2007).
IFFLA also continued its ongoing commitment to supporting and showcasing restored prints of Indian classic films, such as NAYA DAUR as homage to LEGENDARY BOLLYWOOD FILM MAKER B R Chopra
Presentation of the 2009 IFFLA Industry Leadership Awards
For showing excellence in business leadership in Hollywood as well as in Bollywood two stalwarts were respectively presented this prestigious award by Walt Disney International Chairman Andy Bird and Deborah Bothun- an Entertainment Media Communications Advisor in Hollywood.
Richard Fox of Hollywood -- the Executive Vice President of Warner Bros. International and heads up all of Warner Brother’s non-US initiatives in all phases of the entertainment industry.
Bollywood’s Amit 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. “shadowplayindia” and myself personally extend HEARTY CONGRATUALTIONS FOR BRINGING THIS HONOUR TO INDIA.
IFFLA’s popular Rhythm Village, presented by Rukus Avenue, featured free public outdoor entertainment at the ArcLight Hollywood Cinemas courtyard including performances by the entertaining and eclectic talent assembled from all over the world.
CLOSING NIGHT GALA
The festival closed with the IFFLA Closing Night Gala presentation of DOCU- FILM “YES MADAM, SIR” at ArcLight Hollywood--- 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 International GLAMOUR party at The Cabana Club, which continued till wee hours of Monday .
The 2009 IFFLA lineup showcased 21 features (16 Feature / Narrative and 5 Documentary and 16 short films aggregating to 37 films representing 5 countries.
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