CM assures Film City near Himmavu village; Ambarish absent
Mysuru :
After a gap of over two decades, the State Film Awards for the year 2012-13 and 2013-14 were presented at a gala function at the Maharaja College Grounds here on Saturday. A large number of film enthusiasts thronged the venue to witness the event which saw around 59 artistes and technicians feted with State Awards.
Chief Minister Siddharamaiah, District in-charge Minister V. Sreenivasa Prasad, Information and Public Relations Minister R. Roshan Baig, PWD Minister Dr. H.C. Mahadevappa, Kannada and Culture Minister Umashree, Social Welfare Minister H. Anjaneya and Minister for Cooperation H.S. Mahadeva Prasad were among the dignitaries who distributed the awards.
For the year 2012, the Chief Minister presented the Lifetime Achievement Awards to M.Bhaktavatsala (Dr. Rajkumar Award), C. Dattaraj (Puttanna Kanagal Award) and actor Rajesh (Dr. Vishnuvardhan Award). For the year 2013, the Lifetime Achievement Award was conferred upon Actor Srinath (Dr. Rajkumar Award), P.H. Vishwanath (Puttanna Kanagal Award) and K.V. Gupta (Dr. Vishnuvardhan Award). These awards carried a purse of Rs. 2 lakh and a gold medal.
The Best Actor and Best Actress Awards for the year 2012 were given to Darshan and Nirmala Chennappa respectively while Nikhil Manjoo and Nivedita were conferred the Best Actor and Best Actress awards respectively for the year 2013.
Speaking on the occasion, veteran film maker M. Bhaktavatsala observed that the Kannada film industry must come up with good films and stay away from remakes and added that the golden time of Kannada film industry, which was in the 1970s, must return.
Actor Srinath, who received the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2013, addressed the gathering and thanked the government for bestowing the honour and said that he was overjoyed to receive the award.
Film City: After presenting the awards, Siddharamaiah announced that the long-pending Film City will be set up in Mysuru soon and said that the Film City will come up on a 100-acre land which is identified for the purpose at Himmavu village in Siddharamaiah’s constituency Varuna.
He added that the District Administration had identified the land and the work would start very soon.
Ambarish absent : Among the top Sandalwood actors who were conspicuously absent at the award ceremony was Minister of Housing M.H. Ambarish. Actors from Rajkumar family were also not present to the disappointment of many fans who had come to have a glimpse of their favourite stars.
Mysuru Mayor R. Lingappa, MLC Sandesh Nagaraj, MLAs Manjunath and M.K. Somashekar, ZP President Pushpa Amarnath and others were also present during the ceremony.
Villains excluded: After dedicating the Best Actor award for the year 2012 to the actors who played the part of Villains in Sandalwood movies, Actor Darshan addressed the gathering and expressed his dissatisfaction over the absence of recognition for actors in the ‘Villains’ category. He said that there were a lot of actors who have acted as villains in more than 300 to 400 films and that they were barely recognised in the award ceremony. He said that actors like Tiger Prabhakar, Sudheer, Musuri Krishnamurthy, Sundar Krishna Urs and his father Thoogudeepa Srinivas have received awards on various occasions but have gone unrecognised in the State’s awards ceremony.
Responding to the actor’s demands, Chief Minister and Information and Public Relations Minister R. Roshan Baig rushed to the podium and said that they support the actor’s views and that a ‘Best Villain’ category would be introduced in the next year’s awards ceremony.
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> General News / March 01st, 2015