National Film Awards and Dadasaheb Phalke Award Notes

The National Film Awards are the highest honours given to cinema in India, and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award is the highest honour given to an individual for lifetime service to Indian cinema. Papers set by the Staff Selection Commission, the Railway Recruitment Boards and the banking bodies take a question from this area almost every year, and almost always from the founding facts rather than from the current year's winners, which is fortunate for an aspirant because the founding facts never change.

The National Film Awards

The National Film Awards were instituted in 1954, the first set of awards being given for films of the year 1953. They are conferred by the Government of India through the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and the winners are selected by juries appointed for the feature film, the non feature film and the best writing on cinema sections. The stated purpose at the time of founding was to encourage films of aesthetic and technical excellence and of social relevance, in every Indian language and not merely in Hindi, which is why regional cinema has always been strongly represented in the list.

The prizes themselves are named after the lotus. The Swarna Kamal, or Golden Lotus, goes to the highest honours, chief among them the Best Feature Film, while the Rajat Kamal, or Silver Lotus, goes to the other categories such as Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and the awards for the best film in each language. Each award carries a certificate and a cash component along with the medallion. The first Best Feature Film award went to the Marathi film Shyamchi Aai, directed by P. K. Atre, for the year 1953.

Special awards named after public figures have long been part of the list, among them the award for the best debut film of a director, associated with the name of Indira Gandhi, and the award for a film on national integration, associated with the name of Nargis Dutt. Category names in the schedule have been revised from time to time by the government, so the safe answer in an examination is the classification by Swarna Kamal and Rajat Kamal rather than the exact wording of a particular category in a particular year.

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was instituted in 1969, the birth centenary year of Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who is known as the father of Indian cinema. Phalke made Raja Harishchandra in 1913, the first full length Indian feature film, and the award was created to honour a lifetime of outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema.

The first recipient of the award, in 1969, was Devika Rani, the actress who is often called the first lady of Indian cinema and who worked at Bombay Talkies. The award consists of a Swarna Kamal, a cash prize, a shawl and a certificate, and it is presented along with the National Film Awards. It is given to one person a year, and it has gone to actors, directors, producers, singers, writers and technicians across languages, so a question asking which of the four listed persons received it is really a question about the breadth of the award.

How the questions are set

Four facts carry almost all the marks. The National Film Awards began in 1954. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award began in 1969, the birth centenary of Phalke. The first recipient of the Phalke award was Devika Rani. The Swarna Kamal is the golden lotus for the highest honours and the Rajat Kamal the silver lotus for the rest. A fifth fact is worth adding: the awards are given by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, not by any film industry body, so an option naming a private association or a film federation is always wrong.

Two related honours are often placed among the options as distractors and should be kept separate. The Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award of the country and has gone to a handful of figures from the arts, while the Padma awards are conferred every year on Republic Day for distinguished service in many fields, cinema among them. The National Film Awards are specific to cinema and are announced separately, so the three sets must never be confused.