It would be sacrilege not to mention the achievements of a man who has made national Awards a habit; Adoor Gopalakrishnan. One doubts whether there is anyone who boasts of such a record in Indian cinema. In a career spanning nearly four decades, this genius has made just about a dozen films and amazingly enough won the Swarna Kamal five times. That is nearly a 50% success rate at the National awards which is awe inspiring, especially since he is a contemporary of directors like Mrinal Sen and Shyam Benegal. This does not include films of his that have won best feature film awards besides awards for acting.

The most noticeable thing about the National Awards is the south dominance. Now, this is not because the announcement of the awards has given the South exclusive bragging rights for the next one week. This is something genuine. All the major awards have been bagged down south: Best Film (Kancheevaram), Best Director (Adoor), Best Actor (Prakash Raj), Best Actress (Umashree) etc… Even the technical awards like Best Music (Ouseppachan), Best Make up (Pattanam Rasheed), Best Special Effects (Sivaji) and Best animated feature (Inime Naanga Dhan) have all come to the south.

Bollywood, that is often reflected as the flagship industry of Indian cinema has had only a minor share in the awards. This in spite of 2007 being one of the best years for the industry with many meaningful movies releasing which included Chak De India and Taare Zameen Par. Now, not winning the national award does not make a movie any less good to watch. But the fact that these were projected as surefire winners at the National level for quite a while after their release raises a few doubts about the system that promotes films. The commercial aspect notwithstanding, there is definitely a tendency for genuinely good cinema to get overlooked in the face of star power. The irony of the entire matter is that many of the films that have been recognized by the National Awards now were quite blatantly ignored by almost everyone for the past two years. The fact that these movies, released in 2007, had to wait two years to get their due is not healthy for Indian cinema. What makes things even more intriguing is the fact that two of the movies that have got the most prestigious awards, Kancheevaram and Naalu Pennungal have had praises heaped upon them at many international festivals over the last couple of years. Yet, they had to grapple in virtual oblivion for almost two years in the country where they were made, invisible to audiences for whom they were made. Kancheevaram did make a noiseless release earlier this year, but no one really seemed to attach much importance to the movie which has now become the toast of Kollywood, at least for the next few days.

Now for the cliché! Why was Taare Zameen Par sent to the Oscars when by the national jury’s own admission there are at least a couple of movies that are better (if not fare better) than it. Either the jury that sent Taare Zameen Par to the Oscars or the jury that selected Kancheevaram for the National Award has to be wrong. Logic says that both cannot be right. Why the ambiguity? Not easy to answer.

Another point to make here. Around the same time last year, when names for the official Indian entry to the Oscars where being thrown around and Taare Zameen Par was being portrayed a the favorite, there was a column in Behindwoods which had pointed to a small but beautiful film called Tingya, which was also worthy of a look and had a storyline very similar to that of TZP. A year later, the child who played the central character in Tingya upstaged the favorite Darsheel Zaffary of TZP to win the best child artiste award. This does not take away even an ounce from the brilliance of TZP. This is only to point out the ironies that we see every year when the National Awards are announced.