IIFA Awards
2011 IIFA Awards in Toronto
Awarded for	Excellence in cinematic achievements for Bollywood
Presented by	International Indian Film Academy
Country	India
First awarded	2000
Official website	iifa.com

The International Indian Film Academy Awards, also known as the IIFA Awards are presented annually by the International Indian Film Academy to honour both artistic and technical excellence of professionals in Bollywood, the Hindi language film industry. Instituted in 2000, the ceremony is held in different countries around the world every year. This award ceremony has been organised by Wizcraft International Entertainment Pvt Ltd – one of India’s premier event management and entertainment agencies - since its inception.^[1]

History[link]

The first awards were presented in 2000 at The Millennium Dome in London, United Kingdom. From then on the awards were held at locations around the world signifying the international success of Bollywood. The award ceremonies are held in various places around the world:

These awards honour films from the previous calendar year. Amitabh Bachchan has been the Brand Ambassador of the IIFA until 2010 where he resigned from the post due to much controversy about holding that year's ceremony in Sri Lanka,^[2] and appointed Salman Khan.^[3] In 2009, five special awards were introduced: Star of the decade (male and female), Movie of the decade, Music of the decade, and Director of the decade.^[4]

Awards ceremonies[link]

The following is a listing of all International Indian Film Academy Awards ceremonies since since 2000.

Ceremony	Date	Best Picture winner	Host(s)	Venue	City
1st IIFA Awards	June 24, 2000	Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam	Yukta Mookhey Anupam Kher	Millennium Dome	London
2nd IIFA Awards	June 16, 2001	Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai	Priyanka Chopra Kabir Bedi	Super Bowl Arena	Sun City
3rd IIFA Awards	April 6, 2002	Lagaan	Lara Dutta	Arena of Stars	Genting Highlands
4th IIFA Awards	May 17, 2003	Devdas	Anil Kapoor Dia Mirza	Coca-Cola Dome	Johannesburg
5th IIFA Awards	May 22, 2004	Kal Ho Naa Ho	Rahul Khanna	Singapore Indoor Stadium	Singapore
6th IIFA Awards	June 15, 2005	Veer-Zaara	Shahrukh Khan Fardeen Khan Karan Johar	Amsterdam Arena	Amsterdam
7th IIFA Awards	June 17, 2006	Black	Fardeen Khan Lara Dutta	Dubai International Convention Centre	Dubai
8th IIFA Awards	June 9, 2007	Rang De Basanti	Boman Irani Lara Dutta	Hallam FM Arena	Sheffield
9th IIFA Awards	June 8, 2008	Chak De! India	Boman Irani Ritesh Deshmukh	Siam Paragon	Bangkok
10th IIFA Awards	June 13, 2009	Jodhaa Akbar	Boman Irani Ritesh Deshmukh	The Venetian Macao	Macau
11th IIFA Awards	June 5, 2010	3 Idiots	Boman Irani Ritesh Deshmukh	Sugathadasa Stadium	Colombo[2]
12th IIFA Awards	June 25, 2011	Dabangg	Boman Irani Ritesh Deshmukh	Rogers Centre	Toronto[5]
13th IIFA Awards	June 9, 2012		Shahid Kapoor Farhan Akhtar	Singapore Indoor Stadium	Singapore[6][7]

Awards[link]

Popular awards[link]

• Best Movie
• Best Director
• Best Actor
• Best Actress
• Best Supporting Actor
• Best Supporting Actress
• Best Performance in a Negative Role
• Best Performance in a Comic Role
• Star Debut of the Year – Male
• Star Debut of the Year – Female
• Best Music Director
• Best Lyricist
• Best Playback Singer Male
• Best Playback Singer Female

Special awards[link]

• Style Icon
• Style Diva
• Most Glamorous Star of the Year
• Best On-Screen Beauty
• Contribution to a Greener Earth
• Face of the Year
• Special Award for Global Impact
• Outstanding Contribution to Indian cinema
• Outstanding Achievement in Indian cinema
• Outstanding Achievement by an Indian in International Cinema
• Artists of the Decade

Technical awards[link]

• Best Art Direction
• Best Action
• Best Background Score
• Best Cinematography
• Best Choreography
• Best Costume Design

• Best Dialogue
• Best Editing
• Best Makeup
• Best Screenplay
• Best Sound Recording
• Best Sound Re-Recording
• Best Special Effects
• Best Story

Records and facts[link]

• Most awards to a single film
  • 3 Idiots (2009) - 16
  • Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003) - 14

• Most acting awards - male (Best Actor + Best Supporting Actor)
  • Shahrukh Khan (4+0) = 4
  • Hrithik Roshan (4+0) = 4
  • Amitabh Bachchan (2+1) = 3

• Most acting awards - female (Best Actress + Best Supporting Actress)
  • Rani Mukerji (3+1) = 4
  • Jaya Bachchan (0+3) = 3

• Most directing awards
  • Sanjay Leela Bhansali - 3
  • Ashutosh Gowariker - 2
  • Rakesh Roshan - 2
  • Rajkumar Hirani - 2

• Most music awards (Best Music Director + Best Background Score)
  • A. R. Rahman (6+2) = 8
  • Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy (2+1) = 3

See also[link]

• Bollywood
• Cinema of India

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: International Indian Film Academy Awards

• IIFA.com Official website
• IIFA Weekend Promotional Website
• IIFA on BBC Asian Network

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Shabana Azmi
Shabana Azmi at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 2006
Born	(1950-09-18) 18 September 1950 (age 61) Hyderabad, Hyderabad State, India (now in Andhra Pradesh, India)
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1972–present
Spouse	Javed Akhtar

Shabana Azmi (Hindi: शबाना आज़मी, Urdu: شبانہ اعظمی; born 18 September 1950) is an Indian actress of film, television and theatre. An alumna of the Film and Television Institute of India of Pune, she made her film debut in 1974 and soon became one of the leading actresses of parallel cinema, an Indian New Wave movement known for its serious content and neo-realism.^[1][2] Regarded as one of the finest actresses in India, Azmi's performances in films in a variety of genres have generally earned her praise and awards, which include a record of five wins of the National Film Award for Best Actress and several international honours.^[1][3] She has also received four Filmfare Awards.

Azmi has appeared in over 120 Hindi films in both mainstream and independent cinema, and since 1988 she has acted in several foreign projects. In addition to acting, Azmi is a social and women's rights activist, a Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA), and a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament.^[4] She is married to Indian poet and screenwriter Javed Akhtar.^[5]

Early life and background[link]

Shabana Azmi was born in a Muslim family. Her parents are Kaifi Azmi (an Indian poet) and Shaukat Azmi (a veteran Indian People's Theatre Association stage actress),^[4] both of whom were members of the Communist Party of India. Her brother, Baba Azmi, is a cinematographer. Her parents had an active social life, and their home was always thriving with people and activities of the communist party. It was not unusual for her to wake up in the morning and find members of the communist party sleeping about, from a previous night's communist social that ran late. Early in childhood, the environment in her home was inculcated into her a respect for family ties, social and human values; and her parents always supported her to develop a passion for intellectual stimulation and growth.^[6][7][8]

Azmi did her schooling at the premier girl's school, Queen Mary School, Mumbai. She completed a graduate degree in Psychology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and followed it with a course in acting at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune.^[4] She described the reason she decided to attend the film institute, saying, "I had had the privilege of watching Jaya Bhaduri in a (Diploma) film, Suman, and I was completely enchanted by her performance because it was unlike the other performances I had seen. I really marvelled at that and said, 'My god, if by going to the Film Institute I can achieve that, that's what I want to do.'" Azmi eventually topped the list of successful candidates of 1972.^[9]

Career[link]

Azmi graduated from the FTII in 1973 and went on to sign on Khwaja Ahmad Abbas' Faasla and began work on Kanti Lal Rathod's Parinay as well. Her first release, however, was Shyam Benegal's directorial debut Ankur (1974). Belonging to the arthouse genre of neo-realistic films, Ankur is based on a true story which occurred in Hyderabad. Azmi played Lakshmi, a married servant and villager who drifts into an affair with a college student who visits the countryside. Azmi was not the original choice for the film, and several leading actresses of that time refused to do it. The film went on to become a major critical success, and Azmi won the National Film Award for Best Actress for her performances. Upperstall.com described her work in the film as "an outstanding psychologically penetrating performance very different from those seen normally till then in mainstream Hindi cinema", and famous independent filmmaker Satyajit Ray commented, "In Ankur she may not have fitted immediately into her rustic surroundings, but her poise and personality are never in doubt. In two high pitched scenes, she pulls out the stops to firmly establish herself as one of our finest dramatic actresses".^[10]

She went on to receive the National Film Award consecutively for three years from 1983 to 1985 for her roles in movies, Arth, Khandhar and Paar. Another film Godmother (1999) earned her another National Film Award, taking her tally to five.

Azmi’s acting has been characterized by a real-life depiction of the roles played by her. In Mandi, she acted as a madam of a whorehouse. For this role, she put on weight and even chewed betel. Real life portrayals continued in almost all her movies. These included the role of a woman named Jamini resigned to her destiny in Khandhar, and a typical urban Indian wife, homemaker and mother in Masoom.

She also acted in experimental and parallel Indian cinema. Deepa Mehta’s 1996 film Fire depicts her as a lonely woman, Radha, in love with her sister-in-law. The on-screen depiction of lesbianism (perhaps the first in Indian cinema) drew severe protests and threats from many social groups as well as by the Indian authorities. Her role as Radha brought her international recognition with the Silver Hugo Award for Best Actress at the 32nd Chicago Film Festival and Jury Award for Best Actress at Outfest, Los Angeles.^[4]

Some of her notable films include Shyam Benegal's Nishant (1975), Junoon (1978), Susman (1986), and Antarnaad (1992); Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khiladi; Mrinal Sen’s Khandhar, Genesis, Ek Din Achanak; Saeed Mirza’s Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai; Sai Paranjpye’s Sparsh and Disha; Gautam Ghose’s Paar; Aparna Sen’s Picnic and Sati ; Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth; Vinay Shukla’s Godmother. Her other films include the commercially successful Manmohan Desai's Amar Akbar Anthony, and Parvarish and Prakash Mehra’s Jwalamukhi. Azmi starred in Hollywood productions such as John Schlesinger’s Madame Sousatzka (1988) and Roland Joffe’s City of Joy (1992).

Azmi debuted on the small screen in a soap opera titled Anupama. She portrayed a modern Indian woman who, while endorsing traditional Indian ethos and values, negotiated more freedom for herself. She had also participated in many stage plays, and notable among them include M. S. Sathyu’s Safed Kundali (1980), based on The Caucasian Chalk Circle; and Feroz Abbas Khan's Tumhari Amrita along with actor Farooq Sheikh, which ran for five years. She toured Singapore on an assignment with the Singapore Repertory Theatre Company, acting in Ingmar Bergman’s adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll's House, which was directed by Rey Buono. Pointing out the differences in all these media, she once remarked that theatre was really the actor’s medium; the stage was actor’s space; cinema was the director’s medium; and television was a writer’s medium.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life[link]

In the initial stage of her career, she was linked to film director Shekhar Kapur.^{[citation needed]} She married Javed Akhtar, a lyricist, poet and Bollywood scriptwriter^[5] on 9 December 1984, making her a member of the Akhtar-Azmi film family.^[11] It was Akhtar’s second marriage, the first being with Bollywood scriptwriter, Honey Irani.^[12] Indian actresses Farah Naaz and Tabu are her nieces.

Social activism[link]

Shabana Azmi has been a committed social activist, active in supporting child survival and fighting AIDS and injustice in real life.^[13][14] Azmi has voiced her opinion on a variety of issues. Initially, her activism drew skepticism and was dubbed by some as a publicity gimmick. However, she proved her critics wrong and used her celebrity status to emerge as a high-profile social activist.

She had participated in several plays and demonstrations denouncing communalism. In 1989, along with Swami Agnivesh and Asghar Ali Engineer, she undertook a four-day march for communal harmony from New Delhi to Meerut. Among the social groups whose causes she has advocated are slum dwellers, displaced Kashmiri Pandit migrants and victims of the earthquake at Latur (Maharashtra, India). The 1993 Mumbai riots appalled her and she emerged as a forceful critic of religious extremism. After the 11 September 2001 attacks, she opposed the advice of the grand mufti of Jama Masjid calling upon the Muslims of India to join the people of Afghanistan in their fight by retorting that the leader go there alone.^[15]

She has campaigned against ostracism of victims of AIDS.^[13] A small film clip issued by the Government of India depicts an HIV positive child cuddled in her arms and saying: "She does not need your rejection, she needs your love". In a Bengali film named Meghla Aakash she played the role of a physician treating AIDS patients.

She has also given her voice to an HIV/AIDS education animated software tutorial created by the nonprofit organization TeachAIDS.^[16]

Since 1989, she has been a member of the National Integration Council headed by the Prime Minister of India; a member of National AIDS Commission (of India); and was nominated (in 1997) as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament. In 1998, the United Nations Population Fund appointed her as its Goodwill Ambassador for India.^[13]

Selected filmography[link]

She has acted in more than one hundred Hindi films, both in the mainstream as well as in parallel cinema. Several of her films have received attention in the international arena, including at the Norwegian Film Institute, the Smithsonian Institution and the American Film Institute. She has appeared in a number of foreign films, most of which have won international acclaim, including John Schlesinger’s Madame Sousatzka, Nicholas Klotz’s Bengali Night, Roland Joffe’s City of Joy, Channel 4’s Immaculate Conception, Blake Edwards' Son of the Pink Panther, and Ismail Merchant’s In Custody.

• Ankur (1974) - Laxmi
• Nishant (1976) - Sushila
• Fakira (1976) Geeta / Neeta C I D Police Inspector
• Shatranj Ke Khiladi (1977) - Khurshid
• Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) - Laxmi
• Junoon (1978) - Firdaus
• Swami (1978) -
• Sparsh (1980) - Kavita
• Arth (1982) - Mrs. Pooja Inder Malhotra
• Masoom (1983) - Indu D. Malhotra
• Mandi (1983) - Rukmini Bai
• Shart (1986)- Kiran Dutt
• The Bengali Night (1988) - Mrs. Sen
• Madame Sousatzka (1988) - Sushila
• City of Joy (1992) - Kamla Pal
• In Custody (1993) - Imtiaz Begum
• Son of the Pink Panther (1993) - Queen
• Fire (1996) - Radha
• Saaz (1997) - Bansidhar (Bansi) Vrundavan
• Side Streets (1998) - Mrs. Chandra Bipin Raj
• Earth (1998) - voice of older Lenny
• Godmother (1999) - Rambhi
• Makdee (2002) - Makdee
• Tehzeeb (2003) - Rukhsana Jamal
• Morning Raga (2004) - Swarnlatha
• 15 Park Avenue (2005) - Anjali "Anju" Mathur
• Waterborne (2005) - Heera Bhatti
• Umrao Jaan (2006) - Khannum Jaan
• Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (2007) - Nahid
• Loins of Punjab Presents (2007) - Rita Kapoor
• Sorry Bhai! (2008) - Mother Gayatri
• It's a Wonderful Afterlife (2010) - Mrs. Sethi

Awards and honors[link]

National Awards[link]

Azmi has received the National Film Award for Best Actress five times, making her the overall most-awarded actor in the function:^[4]

• 1975 - National Film Award for Best Actress, Ankur
• 1983 - National Film Award for Best Actress, Arth
• 1984 - National Film Award for Best Actress, Khandhar
• 1985 - National Film Award for Best Actress, Paar
• 1999 - National Film Award for Best Actress, Godmother

Filmfare Awards[link]

Winner:

• 1978 - Filmfare Best Actress Award for Swami
• 1984 - Filmfare Best Actress Award for Arth
• 1985 - Filmfare Best Actress Award for Bhavna
• 2006 - Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award

Nominated:

• 1975 - Filmfare Best Actress Award for Ankur
• 1981 - Filmfare Best Actress Award for Thodisi Bewafaii
• 1984 - Filmfare Best Actress Award for Masoom
• 1984 - Filmfare Best Actress Award for Avtaar
• 1984 - Filmfare Best Actress Award for Mandi
• 1985 - Filmfare Best Actress Award for Sparsh
• 2003 - Filmfare Best Villain Award for Makdee
• 2004 - Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award for Tehzeeb

International awards[link]

• 1993: Best Actress award for Libaas in North Korea
• 1994: Best Actress award for Gautam Ghose’s Patang at the Taormina Arte Festival in Italy
• 1996: Silver Hugo Award for Best Actress for Fire at the Chicago International Film Festival^[4]
• 1996: Outstanding Actress in a Feature Film, for Fire in L.A. Outfest^[4]

Other awards[link]

• Azmi won the award for Best Actress (Hindi) at the Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards (BFJA) for Ankur in 1975, Paar in 1984, Ek Pal in 1987, and Godmother in 1999. She won the Best Supporting Actress (Hindi) award for Tehzeeb in 2003.^[17]
• 1998: Star Screen Award Best Supporting Actress for Mrityudand.
• 2004: Zee Cine Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role- Female for Tehzeeb.
• 2005: Star Screen Awards - Best Performance in an Indian Film in English for Morning Raga

Honours and recognitions[link]

• 1988: Awarded the Padma Shri from the Government of India.
• 1988: Yash Bhartiya Award by the Government of Uttar Pradesh for highlighting women’s issues in her work as an actress and activist.
• 1994: Rajiv Gandhi Award for "Excellence of Secularism"
• 1999: Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image, Significant Contribution to Indian Cinema.^[18]
• 2002: Martin Luther King Professorship award by the University of Michigan conferred on her in recognition of her contribution to arts, culture and society.
• 2006: Gandhi International Peace Award, awarded by Gandhi Foundation, London.^[19]
• 2007: She was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate in Art by Chancellor of the University Brandan Foster by the Leeds Metropolitan University in Yorkshire^[20]
• 2009: She was honoured with the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award ^[21]
• 2012: Awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India.

Notes[link]