International Indian Film Academy Awards

Indian movie industry is a multimillion industry, where millions of money is invested and generated. Moviegoers are of no dearth in India, while Indian cinema is recognised in other parts of the world also. Since the early part of 20th century, Indian cinema is known amongst the world population, due to the classics made by legends like Satyajit Ray. It is no surprise that the Indian movies are making it to the award ceremonies in other country, under the foreign film categories and are also being selected as winner. Due to the large number of Indian settling in other countries, Bollywood movies have a craze in these countries. In some cases, a few movies have made more than their revenues from India. Some of the superstars of Indian Bollywood industry are highly respected and revered and their movies run for months together in theatres in foreign countries. In recent years, many of the Bollywood movies are having exclusive overseas rights of distribution and this is being seen as a highly profitable venture. Not only does it showcase the Indian movie industry amongst the foreigners, but it also has become a good revenue churner especially for the producers.

Based on this background, the idea of International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA) was mooted. These award functions are supposed to be held in foreign locations every year, where awards are given to the winners in different categories of Bollywood movies, but in a foreign land. Such functions are organised in a large scale with great foreign locales, star studded evenings and various kinds of songs, dances, fashion shows and other ceremonies. By this, it has become further possible for people in foreign countries to know more about Bollywood and the culture it depicts about the Indians. Even though the International Indian Film Academy Awards is given to Indian Bollywood cinema, the name international has been added to put forth the image of Indian Cinema in front of the international audience in international locations.

Origin and Beginning

International Indian Film Academy Awards is also known as IIFA awards popularly. It is a set of awards given to honour the technical and artistic brilliance in Indian Cinema mostly to Bollywood. The event was first organised in the year 2000 in London, England, the venue being ‘The Millennium Dome’. It was organised by International Indian Film Academy which has been formed by Wizcraft International Entertainment Pvt Ltd. This organisation is a leading entertainment and event management company of India. In 2000, the award ceremony was a one night event. But, later on it expanded over a period of 3 days, where songs, dances, parties, celebrations and fashion shows are held to showcase and celebrate the global success of Indian Hindi language film industry, Bollywood. The last International Indian Film Academy Awards for the 14th year in 2013 was held in Macau in the venue of The Venetian Macao. The 15th IIFA awards ceremony is tentatively planned to be organised in June 2014 in Tampa in United States. Lots of buzz has surrounded the announcement of the event in Tampa and ticket sales have gone up since the announcement of Green Carpet on IIFA in the US.

Awards in IIFA

International Indian Film Academy Awards has become a well known ceremony in the world. In this function, a number of awards are given out to the Bollywood fraternity with the usual categories of best actor, actress, film, director, supporting actor, actress and others. In the year 2009, during the 10th IIFA awards, some special awards were introduced which has grown into 12 special awards, such as Contribution to a Greener Earth, Special Face and Outstanding Achievement by an Indian in International Cinema.
Amitabh Bachchan was the Brand Ambassador for IIFA for 10 years till 2010. Besides the regular category artist awards, International Indian Film Academy Awards is also given to various technical categories like that of action, background score, editing, make up, sound recording, special effects and few more. In the coming years, more of such ceremonies would be held under the International Indian Film Academy Awards, in different parts of the world. These will be putting the Indian cinema in the focus of the world, where more and more people will be aware about the ways of Bollywood and its creations in entertaining the masses.

Photo Gallery