New Delhi: Formation of a two-tier jury and
and increasing the cash component of the awards are some of
the key suggestions made by an expert panel on National Film
Awards, which submitted its report to Information and
Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni today.
The Ministry had formed the committee in December last
year under the chairmanship of veteran filmmaker Shyam
Benegal with the aim of making the National Film Awards more
contemporary and competitive.
Benegal submitted the report to Soni here in the presence
of ministry officials and committee members including Censor
Board chairperson Sharmila Tagore.
Setting up of a two-tier jury for facilitating the
selection process is a key recommendation made by the
committee, wherein there could be a Central Jury and five
regional juries for covering languages in different regions.
The committee has also outlined guidelines for the
regional jury composition.
For finetuning the awards according to the emerging
realities of cinema, the committee has recommended the
constitution of new awards in the sphere of audiography,
music, best screenplay and dialogue.
Also, in order to make the nomenclature of awards more
contemporary, the committee has recommended the award for
`Best Art Direction` to be renamed as the award for `Best
Production Design`.
It has further recommended raising the number of awards
in the feature film category from 31 to 34. Apart from this,
it has also suggested raising the cash prize for special jury
award feature films from Rs 1,25,000 lakh to Rs 2 lakh.
The cash component of awards for Best non-feature Film
and Best Direction may be enhanced from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh
and brought on par with feature films, the report suggested.
The committee also recommended raising cash component of
the Special Jury award from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh and the
cash component of best first non-feature film award from Rs
50,000 to Rs 1,25,000.
For the non-feature film category, it has recommended
that the awards for the categories of environment, agriculture
and education could be split in two categories, namely Best
Educational Film and Best Film on Environment.
While appreciating the good work done by the committee
and submitting the report within a short span of time, Soni
said that the Ministry would now process the recommendations
made by the panel.
Apart from Benegal, the committee consisted of noted film
personalities like Sai Paranjpye, Ashok Vishwanathan, Rajiv
Mehrotra, Sharmila Tagore, Vishal Bhardwaj, Nagesh Kukunoor,
Mohan Agashe, Waheeda Rehman, Jahnu Baruah and Shaji Karun.
PTI
