Awards & Honours Quiz: Oscars and International Film Awards

The correct answer is A, Bhanu Athaiya. She won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design in 1983 for Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi, sharing the award with John Mollo, and became the first Indian of any kind to receive an Oscar. She had begun her career with the film CID and designed costumes for more than a hundred Hindi films.

Option B, Satyajit Ray, is the answer most candidates choose wrongly. His Academy Award of 1992 was an honorary one for lifetime achievement, given nine years after Athaiya's win and in the year of his death. Option C, A. R. Rahman, won two Oscars in 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire, for the original score and for the song Jai Ho. Option D, Resul Pookutty, won the award for sound mixing for the same film in the same year, so both are much later than 1983.

The correct answer is D, the television industry. The Emmy awards are the American honours for work made for television, covering drama series, comedy, news and documentary programmes, and they stand in the same relation to television as the Oscars do to cinema. The International Emmy awards are given separately for programmes produced outside the United States.

Option A, music, is the field of the Grammy awards, given by the Recording Academy. Option B, literature, is covered by prizes such as the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, not by the Emmy. Option C, cinema, is the field of the Academy Awards, the BAFTA and the festival prizes at Cannes, Berlin and Venice. The four American awards are best learnt together: Oscar for film, Emmy for television, Grammy for music and Tony for theatre.

The correct answer is C, Tanvi Shah. She sang the Spanish lines of Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire and also wrote them, and when the song won the Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media in 2010 she became the first Indian woman to win a Grammy award. A. R. Rahman won two Grammy awards at the same ceremony for the music of the film.

Option A, Monali Thakur, is a playback singer who won the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer, an Indian honour and not a Grammy. Option B, Neeti Mohan, is a singer who came to notice through a television talent show and has sung for many Hindi films, but she has not won a Grammy. Option D, Palak Muchhal, is a playback singer known as much for her charity work for children with heart ailments. None of the three has won this award.

The correct answer is B, Best Costume Design. Bhanu Athaiya designed the costumes for Gandhi, the film Richard Attenborough made in 1982, and shared the Academy Award of 1983 in that category with the British designer John Mollo. The film itself won eight Oscars that year, among them Best Picture and Best Director.

Option A, Best Actress, has never been won by an Indian. Option C, Best Original Score, is the category in which A. R. Rahman won in 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire, twenty six years later. Option D, Best Documentary, is a different branch of the awards; in the short film branch of it The Elephant Whisperers won in 2023. Remembering the category with the name is what this question tests, because all four are real Academy Award categories.

The correct answer is B, Slumdog Millionaire, the film directed by Danny Boyle and set in Mumbai. A. R. Rahman won the Academy Award for Best Original Score and, with the lyricist Gulzar, for the Best Original Song Jai Ho. At the same ceremony Resul Pookutty won the award for sound mixing, so four Indians were honoured for one film.

Option A, Lagaan, was nominated in 2002 in the foreign language film category but did not win, although its music was also by Rahman. Option C, Life of Pi, based on the novel by Yann Martel and set largely on the sea with an Indian boy as its hero, won four Oscars in 2013, but its score was written by Mychael Danna. Option D, Gandhi, won eight Oscars in 1983, including the costume design award of Bhanu Athaiya, but its music was not Rahman's.

The correct answer is C, 1992. The Academy gave Satyajit Ray an honorary award for his lifetime of work in cinema, and it was handed to him in a Kolkata hospital as he was too ill to travel. He died a few weeks later in the same year, and the Government of India conferred the Bharat Ratna on him in 1992 as well.

Option A, 1983, is the year Bhanu Athaiya won the costume design Oscar for Gandhi, which is the confusion this question rests on. Option B, 1985, is the year Ray was given the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in India, an honour that is often mixed with the Academy award in the options. Option D, 2009, is the year of the four Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire. Ray's films, beginning with Pather Panchali of 1955, had by then been honoured at Cannes, Venice and Berlin.

The correct answer is C, the Cannes Film Festival, held every year in the French town of Cannes on the Mediterranean coast. Its highest award is the Palme d'Or, the Golden Palm, given to the best film of the main competition, and below it comes the Grand Prix, which Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light won in 2024.

Option A, the Berlin Film Festival, called the Berlinale, gives the Golden Bear to its best film and Silver Bears in the other categories. Option B, the Venice Film Festival, the oldest of the three, gives the Golden Lion. Option D, the Toronto Film Festival in Canada, has no jury prize of that kind as its highest honour; its best known award is decided by the audience. The three European festivals and their animals or plants must be learnt as fixed pairs.

The correct answer is A, Berlin. The Berlin International Film Festival, held in Germany early in the year, gives the Golden Bear to the best film and Silver Bears for direction, acting and screenplay. The bear was chosen because it is the emblem of the city of Berlin itself, which makes the pair easy to remember.

Option B, Venice, gives the Golden Lion, the lion being the symbol of the city and of St Mark. Option C, Cannes, gives the Palme d'Or, the golden palm leaf taken from the coat of arms of the town. Option D, the Moscow International Film Festival, gives the St George statuette and is rarely the answer in an Indian paper. Berlin, Venice and Cannes are the three festivals whose prizes are asked again and again.

The correct answer is B, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a body of film professionals in the United States founded in 1927. Its members vote on the awards, the first ceremony was held in 1929 for the films of 1927 and 1928, and the golden statuette given to a winner is universally called the Oscar.

Option A, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, gives the BAFTA awards in the United Kingdom, which are the British counterpart of the Oscars. Option C, the Recording Academy, gives the Grammy awards for music. Option D, the Directorate of Film Festivals, is an Indian government body that has handled the National Film Awards and the International Film Festival of India, so it belongs to a national list and not to an international one.

The correct answer is B, RRR, the Telugu film directed by S. S. Rajamouli. Its song Naatu Naatu, composed by M. M. Keeravani with words by Chandrabose, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2023, the first time a song from an Indian production had taken that award. At the same ceremony The Elephant Whisperers won the award for Best Documentary Short Film.

Option A, Baahubali, is an earlier pair of films by the same director with music by the same composer, but no Oscar came to it. Option C, Pushpa, is a Telugu film whose songs were widely popular, and Option D, Kantara, is a Kannada film of 2022 that drew large audiences; neither won an Academy Award. The name of the composer and of the lyricist are asked as often as the name of the film.

The correct answer is B, Aparajito, the second film of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy, which won the Golden Lion, the highest award of the Venice Film Festival, in 1957. The trilogy follows the boy Apu from his village childhood to his life in the city, and Aparajito is the middle part of it.

Option A, Pather Panchali, is the first film of the trilogy, made in 1955, and it was honoured at Cannes in 1956 rather than at Venice. Option C, Do Bigha Zamin, the 1953 film of Bimal Roy about a farmer who loses his land, was honoured at Cannes. Option D, Neecha Nagar, the 1946 film of Chetan Anand, shared the highest prize at the first Cannes festival, which makes it the earliest Indian success at a European festival but not a Venice winner.

The correct answer is C, the United Kingdom. BAFTA stands for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and its awards are given for films, television programmes and games made or shown in Britain. The film awards are announced a few weeks before the Oscars and are often treated as a pointer to them.

Option A, the United States, is the country of the Oscars, the Emmy, the Grammy and the Tony. Option B, France, is the country of the Cannes Film Festival and its Palme d'Or. Option D, Italy, is the country of the Venice Film Festival and its Golden Lion. A question in this form is really asking whether the candidate can place each award in its own country, so the four countries should be learnt with the award names.