There is a need to promote and encourage the best writers who put light on the cinemas
The 70 th Annual National Awards for films, actors, music directors and technicians in 2022 were declared on August 16. The Awards are decided by a jury chosen carefully by the members of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on the basis of these members’ track record and experience in the film industry. There is a section on Feature Films in the national category and then there are Best Feature films in regional languages. There is also a section in non-fiction or documentary films classified into many sections which is very beneficial for relative newcomers and documentary filmmakers whose films are open only in film festivals.
There is one more category known as the Best Writing on Cinema. This is divided into two segments – The Best Book on Cinema and The Best Writing on Cinema with a separate expert jury. All Indian regional languages including English entries can be submitted by entrants. While the Best Book on Cinema is chosen from entries of entire books on cinema entered by authors, the Best Writing on Cinema is for a collection of published articles published with the byline of the journalists and clippings of the published articles during the year prior to the award. Best Writing on Indian Cinema in both sections are awarded with Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus).
Though the National Awards for different sections of cinema began in 1954, the Writing awards began in 1981 at the 29th National Film Awards However, the media pays scant attention to the Best Writing Awards and as a result, many brilliant journalists and authors specializing in cinema do not send their entries for selection. The time-span between media announcement of entries and the last date is so marginal that many writers miss out on sending in their entries. Surprisingly, several filmmakers have bagged the National Award for the Best Writing on Cinema in the Best Books section. Among them are Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Cinemayude Lokam) in Malayalam in 1983, veteran actress Bhanumathi Ramakrishna (Naalo Nenu) in Telugu, noted actor Bharath Gopi for the book Abhinava Anibhavan in Malayalam in 1993.
The first award for journalistic articles in the same “Best Writing on Cinema” was begun in the year 1984 and the award went to Swapan Mullick who was then in an editorial position in The Statesman in Kolkata. The following year, the award went to the famous veteran writer, journalist and filmmaker Chidananda Dasgupta. Joshy Joseph, a national-award-winning filmmaker of documentary films, bagged this award in writing on cinema in 2010.
Very few eminent journalists have bagged these two awards under the Best Writing on Cinema mainly because it lacks publicity, media coverage and so on. Fewer journalists have bagged both the awards in this category – for the Best Book and for the Best Articles on Cinema in previous years. Among them is Manmohan Singh Chadda who won both awards for the Best Book on Cinema and for the Best Film Critic in Hindi. He still involves in research on cinema.
This writer is the only woman who has won both awards, the Best Articles in 1990 and for the Best Book on Cinema in English in 2002. This section demands more media coverage and a longer span for entry into the competition which has great jury members and the awards, as far as I know, is completely free of political interference.
(The writer is a film enthusiast. The views are personal.)
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