Kalakar Award for Vyjayantimala Bali

In its tenth year, Kalakar Awards bestowed the Lifetime Achievement Award on the great actress dancer Vyjayantimala Bali who reigned at the top danseuse actress for nearly two decades in Bollywood. Kalakar Awards, primarily founded by cultural-minded Kolkatans like Ashok Kalanauria and others, has been honoring artistes and technicians from films, both in Kolkata and in Mumbai, with awards for their contribution to cinema over time and even for their performances in films in the year preceding the award. The other senior artiste from Mumbai to be bestowed with the Kalakar Award was Asrani. Both Vyjayantimala Bali and Asrani flew down to Kolkata to receive their awards in person. Other awardees were Madhuri Mukherjee, Gautam Ghose, Rajkumar Santoshi, Manoj Bajpai, Debasree Roy, Javed Akhtar, Abhishek Chatterjee, Prabhat Roy, Amar Upadhyay (for his performance in Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi), Indrani Haldar, Rupa Ganguly, Bali Brahmbhatt, Debjani Majumdar (dance), Dr Bhupen Hazarika (music), Anuradha Paudwal, Bappi Lahiri and Usha Uthup. The programme, which drew a full house at the spacious Science City Auditorium, was compered by Shakil Ansari followed by a scintillating cultural evening filled with music, song, dance, mimicry and humour.

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The Kalakar Awards Committee with Ashok Kalanauria as its Chairman, was helped with the coordinating efforts of Cine Advance, the cinema broadsheet that comes out every week in the city and ATN Bangla in association with The Asian Age. “It is Eastern India’s way of commemorating the contribution of the legendary world of cinema, television, stage and music to the cultural world of the common people and thus enriching their lives. We take pride in the event entering into its tenth year of expressing our deep gratitude to the artistes and performers, in brief, to the kalakars of yesterday, today and tomorrow who have been with us every moment, weaving into our lives, the celluloid world of fantasy and magic and giving our dreams a new dimension,” said Kalanauria offering the rationale for the awards.

—Shoma A Chatterji