With an acting workshop by Kevin Spacey, a free public party and plenty of song and dance, the IIFA Awards, Hindi cinema’s equivalent of the Oscars, is gearing up to show America what it means to celebrate – desi style
Bollywood is promising a song-and-dance extravaganza as Indian cinema throws its International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards ceremony in the United States for the first time, looking to tap into a mature but lucrative market.
The IIFA said the House of Cards star Kevin Spacey would appear in an acting workshop during the April 23 to 26 programme in Tampa, Florida – part of an effort to woo an American audience.
Hoping to show Bollywood’s global appeal, the industry’s answer to the Oscars has never been held in India since its inception in 2000. Instead, the awards have travelled to Britain, Canada and Australia but never the US, the home turf of Hollywood.
“It was high time, really. I don’t know what has taken us so long,” said the Shaadi Ke Side Effects actress Vidya Balan, who will also appear at the awards show.
In what may be a good omen for Bollywood’s chances stateside, Balan said she unwittingly held up the airport’s passport control line while a US officer expressed her fondness for India’s “uplifting” films.
Balan, known for portraying strong women and who served on the jury at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, said American audiences were beginning to ditch stock images of Indian cinema as formulaic song-and-dance routines.
“I think some had the idea that Hindi film was esoteric or all a one-off spectacle,” she said. “I think they are now ripe to see that Hindi cinema has far more to offer.”
Plans are on to have a heavy dose of glitz, with music, dancing and leading names for the main April 26 gala, which organisers predict will pack the 66,000-capacity home stadium of American football’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The event will feature performances by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, the Pakistani qawwali singer whose music has appeared in both Bollywood and Hollywood films.
Organisers said that Tampa had courted the Bollywood awards and that the industry chose the city for its record at holding major events, including the Super Bowl and the 2012 Republican Party convention.
Kiran Patel, an Indian-American health-care mogul in Tampa, who helped bring the awards to the city, said that Bollywood played a “tremendous role” in the world by appealing to moviegoers regardless of religion, race or other factors.
“It is not only entertainment that it is doing, but it is introducing our culture, our heritage to mainstream America,” he said at an event in New York.
Sabbas Joseph, the director of the IIFA, added: “You have the east and west coming together, you have businesses coming together and you have tourism coming together.”
The awards will kick off with a free party for the Tampa public, complete with Indian food, music and dancing.
* AFP
