Apurba Kishore Bir to get Jaydev award

--Film Swayamsiddha begged eight awards

BHUBANESWAR: Nationally and internationally acclaimed director and cinematographer Apurba Kishore Bir will get Jaydev award, the highest award for Odia cinema, for lifetime achievement for the year of 2010, declared by the jury members on Sunday at a Press meet here.

National film awarded Swayamsiddha, which is based on Maoist insurgency in Odisha, begged eight awards including best film of the year 2010. The film has also captured the awards including Sudhansu Mohan Sahu as best director, Namita Mallick as best story writer, Sanjeeb Kumar Mahapatra as best photographer, Budha Maharana as best art director, Ajay as best sound recordist and famous Cine actor Sidhanta Mahapatra adjudged for special jury award.

While the jury members declared Babusan’s name as best actor and best playback singer for the film ‘Prema Adhei Akshara’ and Riya as best actress for the same film. In other categories, Abhijit Mazumdar for best music director, Ira Mohanty for best female playback singer, Mihir Das for best supporting actor, Ushashi Mishra for best supporting actress, Swarup Nayak for best lyrics, Jiban Panda for best comedian, Master Ankit for best child artist and Sukumar Mani for best editing.

For the year of 2010, award will be given in 19 categories out of 22 categories. Three other categories such as Best Children Film, Best Documentary Film and Best Screenplay awards were remained empty as the juries could not get satisfactory entry from Odisha. The juries consisted of eminent writer Prativa Ray, film producer and director Gadadhar Putty, Technician Raju Mishra, Cine critic Pradosh Patnaik, film producer and director Sabyasachi Mahapatra and journalist Parikhit Jena. 

“The award money has been hiked from Rs1, 27, 500 to Rs 5,00,000 and the numbers of award increased from 22 to 27 categories which will be implemented from the year of 2011,” informed Minister for Culture Prafulla Samal to the Press.

“This year we adjudged Apurba Kishore Bir for his life time achievement and contribution to Odia Film Industry. We made justice to confer on Bir, who has worked for Oscar awarded Hollywood movie ‘Gandhi’, said chairman of jury committee Sarat Pujari.

The award will be conferred at 22^nd State Film Award festival for the year 2010 on December 21 at Utkal Mandap here.