Background
The Directorate of Film Festivals makes awards annually in several categories. The organisation was established by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Government of India) in 1973 to arrange and manage national and international film festivals in India. The President of India presents the awards "to encourage the production of films of aesthetic and technical excellence and social relevance contributing to the understanding and appreciation of cultures of different regions of the country in cinematic form and thereby also promoting integration and unity of the nation."
Called the State Awards for Films when established in 1954, the awards ceremony is older than the Directorate of Film Festivals. The State Awards instituted the individual award in 1968 as the Bharat Award for the Best Actor; in 1975 it was renamed as the Rajat Kamal Award for the Best Actor. Throughout the past 45 years, accounting for ties and repeat winners, the Government of India has presented a total of 47 Best Actor awards to 38 different actors.
Until 1974, winners of this National Film Award of Merit received a figurine and certificate, but since 1975, they have been awarded with a Rajat kamal (silver lotus), certificate and a cash prize (50,000 in 2012). Although the Indian film industry produces films in around 20 languages and dialects, the actors whose performances have won awards have worked in seven major languages: Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil.
Read more about this topic: National Film Award For Best Actor
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)