NEW DELHI: ‘A Drop of Sunshine‘ by Aparna Sanyal on disability and an advertising short on ‘Adidas‘ by Uzer Khan and Sebastian Narsing have won the highest number of awards in the annual Indian Documentary Producers Association (IDPA) Awards for 2010.
While ‘A Drop of Sunshine‘ won five awards including best film on the theme of disability, the ‘Adidas‘ short received four including one for special effects. Other films to win more than one award were ‘Visible Bra Straps‘ by Ajitesh Sharma, ‘Inshallah, Football‘ by Ashvin Kumar, and the commercial ‘Airtel‘ by Uzer Khan.
E Suresh and the team of Eekasaurus won as many as seven awards for different films, while institutions like the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute of India, Kolkata, the Whistling Woods International of Mumbai, the National Institute of Design of Ahmedabad, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai also won awards.
72 films have won Gold, Silver or Certificate of Merit in 26 categories presented for 2010, thus increasing the number of categories over 2009. The awards are being presented in Mumbai on 30 October.
Some of the categories were Disability, Environment, Advertising films, public service, short fiction, animation, special effects, student films, and technical awards like editing, cinematography and script-writing.
The winning film for environment is ‘Faith revisited‘ by Ishani K Dutta which explores how religion can be used to cleanse the environment, while senior filmmaker Umesh Aggarwal won the top award for his film ‘Annadata - Food for thought‘ in the non-fiction (under thirty minutes) category. The short fiction in animation went to ‘Fisher Women Trailer‘ by E Suresh of Studio Eeksaurus, while the short fiction award went to ‘Lonely Hearts‘ by Srijith Paul. ‘The Banana Pandit‘ by students of Whistling Woods International received the student award in the animation category.
The films were seen in Mumbai and Delhi for each category by separate juries comprising over 35 eminent members who have excelled in their respective fields.
The IDPA has been collaborating in organising the Mumbai International Film Festival for shorts, documentary and animation films organised by the Films Division, the Short Film Center at IFFI every year, and the Chhota Cinema here that help promote the documentary movement.
The IDPA is one of the oldest film associations set up as a trust in 1956. It has been guided since its birth in 1956 by a galaxy of member filmmakers and producers from Satyajit Ray, Paul Zils, Shyam Benegal, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Manmohan Shetty and others, many of whom started their careers with short films. Members of the IDPA have won several Awards including those given by international agencies including the United Nations.
