3 minutes agoAuthor: Kavita Rajput
For the first time in the 95th Oscar ceremony, India has received two awards for the first time. The song Naatu Naatu from the film RRR won the award for Best Original Song. At the same time, The Elephant Whispers became the Best Documentary Short Film. However, the documentary feature film All That Breathes has dropped out of the race. India got nominations in these three categories in the Oscar Awards.
In 95 years, films were sent from India for Oscars 50 times. Films like Gandhi, Slumdog Millionaire got Oscars but these were not Indian films. So far, Mother India, Salaam Bombay and Lagaan are the only films that have reached the final nominations for the Oscars. He didn’t even get an award. The Oscar jury has its own reasons for rejecting films, but there have been times when the arguments were quite ridiculous.
So far 13 Indians have received nominations at the Oscars, out of which only 8 have been successful in winning the award, including Bhanu Athaiya, Satyajit Ray, AR Rahman-Gulzar (shared the award), Rasal Pookutty, Chandrabose-MM Keerwani, Guneet Monga. The names of Kartiki Gonsalves (shared the award) are included.
Let’s take a look at all the films, documentaries or short films that got nominations.
1957: FFI (Film Federation of India) sent its first official entry in the Best International Feature Film category at the 29th Academy Awards, which was Mother India. The film lost to ‘Knight of Cabiria’ by just one vote.
In 1957, ‘Mother India’ missed the Oscar by just one vote at the 29th Academy Awards.
In fact, some jury members of the Oscars were puzzled as to why Nargis, playing the role of Radha, turned down the marriage proposal of Lala Sukhilal, who wanted to help her continuously, after her husband eloped. If Radha had married Lala, her children would not have had to struggle so much. Here the heroine showed conservative thinking.
1961: Producer Ismail Merchant’s 13-minute short film The Creation of Woman (1961) was nominated in the Best Short Subject (Live Action) category at the 33rd Academy Awards, but failed to win.
1969: Fali Bilimoria’s short documentary The House That Ananda Built (1968) was nominated for Best Documentary (Short Subject) at the 41st Academy Awards but did not win the award.
1978: Ishu Patel’s short animated Bead Game (1977) was nominated in the Best Animated Short Film category at the 50th Academy Awards but did not win an Oscar.
1979: The 18-minute documentary An Encounter with Faces (1978) was nominated for Best Documentary in the Best Visual and Cinematography category at the 51st Oscar ceremony. It didn’t even win an Oscar.
1983: Bhanu Athaiya won the first Oscar
Bhanu Athaiya became the first Indian to win an Oscar for Best Costume Design at the 55th Academy Awards. He won this award for Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi in 1982, which he shared with John Mollo.
For Gandhi, sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar was nominated along with English composer George Fenton. He received this nomination for Best Original Score but could not win the Academy Award.
1987: Producer Ismail Merchant was nominated for the 59th Academy Awards for the romantic film A Room with a View, but this film also did not win the award.
1989: Mira Nair’s film Salaam Bombay (1988) was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 61st Academy Awards but could not win the award. The film was based on Mumbai, based on the slum conditions here.
1992: Satyajit Ray received the Honorary Academy Award
Satyajit Ray died on April 23, 1992, a month after receiving the Oscar.
Bengali director Satyajit Ray was awarded the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Academy Award at the 64th Academy Awards in 1992. He is the first Indian to receive this award.
At that time Ray was very ill so could not attend the award ceremony. The award committee itself came to India and presented its award to the hospitalized Ray. Famous actress Audrey Hepburn herself came with the award committee to receive the award.
Then she herself was 62 years old and she died a year later in 1993. Even at the 64th Academy Awards in America, Ray’s name was announced by Audrey Hepburn from the stage. He had said, ‘Satyajit Ray has been making films for four decades. He has left his example on filmmakers all over the world.
Satyajit Ray could not go to America to receive the award but a video of him recorded from Kolkata’s hospital was played in the ceremony. In this, Satyajit Ray was seen wearing a brown colored kurta and was lying on the bed.
He had said, ‘It is a great experience for me to receive this award and to be here with you all tonight. This is the biggest achievement of my career. When I was young, even in school, I had a keen interest in films. I was a film fan. Then I got interested in cinema. Whatever I have learned about cinema, I have learned from American films only. That’s why today I express my gratitude to the motion picture American cinema, which has given me this honor.
1993: Ismail Merchant received his third Oscar nomination for the 1992 film Howard’s End. Howards & Co received a nomination in the Best Picture category at the 65th Oscars but did not win the Oscar.
1994: The Remains of the Day, produced by Ismail Merchant at the 66th Oscars, received a nomination in the Best Picture category but did not win the award.
2002: Ashutosh Gowariker’s ‘Lagaan’ (2002) also received an Oscar nomination in 2002 for Best Foreign Language Film. The film was of 224 minutes, which became the reason for its defeat. Due to paucity of time, the jury could not watch the entire film. No Man’s Land, the film that won the Oscar this year, was only 98 minutes long.
2005: Ashwin Kumar’s 2004 release Little Terrorist was nominated for the 77th Academy Awards in the Best Short Subject category but failed to win the award.
AR Rahman won two Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire in 2009.
2009: AR Rahman won two Oscars
AR Rahman received two Oscars for the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire at the 81st Academy Awards. This award was received for Best Original Score and Best Original Song category which he shared with Gulzar.
2009: Resal Pookutty also won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire
Indian sound designer Resal Pookutty also won an Oscar for Best Sound Mixing for the same film.
2011: At the 83rd Academy Awards, the film If I Rise was nominated for Best Original Score and Best Original Song, but did not win the award.
2013: Bombay Jayshree Ramnath was nominated in the Best Original Song category at the 85th Academy Awards for Life of Pi (2012) but did not win the award.
2022: Filmmakers Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas were nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 94th Academy Awards for the documentary film Writing with Fire but did not win the award.
Chandrabose and composer MM Keerwani, who wrote RRR’s Natu-Natu song at the Oscar ceremony, took the trophy.
2023: At the 95th Academy Awards, the song Naatu Naatu from the film RRR won the Best Original Song award. Lyricist Chandrabose and composer MM Keeravani received an Oscar.
At the same time, The Elephant Whispers became the Best Documentary Short Film for which director Kartiki Gonsalves and producer Guneet Monga took the award. The documentary feature film All That Breathes Race was nominated but did not win the award.
