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Dadasaheb Phalke and the TV show Naagin have something in common. An award

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Shaurya Thapa
Shaurya ThapaFeb 21, 2023 | 16:34

Dadasaheb Phalke and the TV show Naagin have something in common. An award

The Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival markets itself as an independent festival honouring the depths of Indian cinema but it mostly taps the mainstream surface of Bollywood (photo-DailyO)

What is common between Dadasaheb Phalke and the latest season of Naagin? Well, the lead actress of the Hindi supernatural soap opera is now a Dadasaheb Phalke awardee. Tejasswi Prakash was just one of the many awardees at the latest edition of the Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival (DPIFF) which was held on February 20 (Monday). 

For the ones who think that this Dadasaheb Phalke award refers to India's most prestigious film award that is given as a lifetime achievement award at the National Film Awards, the one we're talking about here is of an entirely different league.

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While the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke award was first awarded in 1969 (with its latest recipient being Hindi actress Asha Parekh who won the 2020 award), the Father of Indian Cinema’s name was branched out in the 2010s with the so-called Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival. 

What makes these awards stand out? (Nothing much)

Promoted as “India’s only independent international film festival”, the Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival (DPIFF) was founded in 2012 with its first-ever ceremony taking place in 2017. The management board includes the legendary director Dadasaheb Phalke’s own grandson Chandrashekhar Pusalkar, and founder and Managing Director Amit Mishra, among others. 

Rishab Shetty posing with his award for Most Promising Actor at DPIFF  2023 (photo-India Today)
Rishab Shetty posing with his award for Most Promising Actor at DPIFF 2023 (photo-India Today)

While it doesn’t directly fall under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (which awards the National Film Awards), there are several government-associated members on the board. Mishra himself serves on the Advisory Panel of the government’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). 

India’s domestic film festivals would still not match the standards of a Sundance or a Cannes but leading festivals such as MAMI (Mumbai International Film Festival) do manage to rake in some notable international speakers and even screen some significant non-Indian films.

So, how does DPIFF really claim itself to be the country’s only independent international film festival? The question remains unanswered. 

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Also, given that almost all of its honours have been granted to mainstream actors and films, how is it really an “independent film festival”? This question too, remains unanswered. 

What is the whole point of the festival? 

A visit to the film festival’s website would lead one to grandiose claims such as “a mission to celebrate the work of aspiring, young, independent & professional filmmakers”, and “the festival celebrates the brilliance of the Indian film industry by making an effort to acknowledge and aid nascent projects by bringing them to mainstream audiences”.

With the latest edition’s results, it is hard to decide whether this awards ceremony has managed to live up to its lofty claims. 

More than half of the wins were for Hindi films. So, is DPIFF really honouring “Indian cinema”? 

For some unexplainable reason, the Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival has two categories for the best film.

  • One is Film of the Year which was bagged by SS Rajamouli’s Oscar-nominated RRR, and
  • the other is Best Film which was given to Vivek Agnihotri’s polarising political drama The Kashmir Files. 

Apart from RRR getting the top honour, the rest of the lot just turned out to be just another Filmfare Awards rip-off as it doubled more as a celebration of Bollywood than Indian cinema. So, while Kannada actor Rishab Shetty received the award for Most Promising Actor (for Kantara), the rest of the acting lot were all Hindi actors. 

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Alia Bhatt got Best Actress for Gangubai Kathiawadi while her husband Ranbir Kapoor got Best Actor for Brahmastra: Part One. Manish Paul (yes the same Manish Paul that Hindi TV watchers would have seen hosting dance shows) picked up Best Supporting Actor for Jugg Jugg Jeeyo while both the male and female singing categories also went to Hindi playback singers. And the Best Actor (Critics) went to Varun Dhawan for Bhediya while the Best Actress (Critics) went to Vidya Balan for her Prime Video movie, Jalsa. If all of this weren’t enough, there’s also a category called “Most Versatile Actor” which obviously went to yet another Hindi actor: Anupam Kher for The Kashmir Files. 

Just like Filmfare’s now defunct-category for Best Villain, Malayalam star Dulquer Salmaan won Best Actor in a Negative Role for Chup (again, a Hindi film). In fact, Chup’s R Balki also received Best Director. 

And DPIFF also has categories for TV and web series!

If the film results were Hindi enough, DPIFF also continued the trend in the other categories. For instance, Ajay Devgn’s Rudra (a remake of the British series Luther) got Best Web Series, while Anupamaa won Television Series of the Year. And as mentioned earlier, Naagin and Bigg Boss alumna Tejasswi Prakash received Best Actress in a Television Series. 

To put it in a nutshell, DPIFF doesn’t just come off as a rip-off of Filmfare Awards but also Star Parivaar or Zee Rishtey Awards! Even if its TV wins are just limited to Hindi-language titles. 

DPIFF does have a South Indian edition but then what's the point?

In a year of several critically-acclaimed films in other languages (especially in the South with Tamil and Malayalam), just honouring mainstream blockbusters like RRR and Kantara just seems tokenistic to say the least. DPIFF does have an award ceremony specific for South Indian films (DPIFF South) but by that logic, RRR and Kanatara should have just been honoured there instead of the Bollywood fest that happened yesterday. The linguistics behind DPIFF can be quite confusing as it just breaks down Indian cinema in the binaries of North and South.

(poster from the first-ever DPIFF South ceremony in 2019)
(poster from the first-ever DPIFF South ceremony in 2019)

Thankfully, the National Film Awards are still accommodative enough towards a broader set of languages and film industries. This again begs the question: if we have a state-sponsored award like National Film Awards and we have enough privately-funded awards like Filmfare, what is DPIFF's relevance? Error 404: Answer not found. 

Does the film industry take DPIFF seriously?

It is no surprise that DPIFF has been trolled for its awards (Nora Fatehi won at DPIFF for Best Performer of the Year in 2021) but somehow individuals from the film industry (mostly Bollywood) do seem to take it very seriously. Even this year, the mainstream winners were joined by other actors such as Jim Sarbh, Ronit Roy, and Shriya Saran. 

Nora Fatehi won Performer of the Year at DPIFF 2021 (photo-Nora Fatehi on Instagram)
Nora Fatehi won Performer of the Year at DPIFF 2021 (photo-Nora Fatehi on Instagram)

While people like Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan were still missing from the venue (and Ranveer Singh might still be chilling at the NBA court), the fact that all of its awardees showed up at the festival’s “red carpet” does imply that it means something to them. Even industry veterans like Anupam Kher and Rekha (who was awarded with Outstanding Contribution In The Film Industry) showed up. 

In the end, while DPIFF might honour some deserving (and some not so deserving) names, it is really not the international/pan-Indian film festival that it tries to brand itself as. One can hope that things will change next year but that hope seems bleak as DPIFF just seems to fall in the category of “just another Hindi awards show”.

Last updated: February 21, 2023 | 16:34
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