NEW DELHI: Musical performances by national award-winning artistes formed the highlight of presentation at the 59th National Film Awards.
National film awardee Anand Bhate rendered award-winning songs in ‘Balgandharva’ and took the audience into a classic mode. The awards were presented by vice-president M Hamid Ansari.
Similarly, Roopa Ganguly who rendered a song in the Bengali film ‘Abhosheyshey’ for which she has won the National Award, crooned the song.
Amit Trivedi and Amitabh Bhattacharya had the audiences humming the words of the song ‘Agar Zindagi’ in the award-winning film ‘I am’ which has won the best Hindi film award, apart from the best lyrics award for Bhattacharya.
For music direction, there were two awards, both bagged by Bengali films: Neel Dutt got it for the songs in ‘Ranjana Ami Ar Ashbo Na’ and Mayookh Bhaumik won it for Background music for ‘Laptop’.
Baylon Fonseca won the location sound recordist award for the song ‘Senorita’ in ‘Zindagi na milegi Dobara’. Fonseca also received the sound designer award for ‘Game’ which won another award: re-recordist of the final mixed track for Hitendra Ghosh.
Among non-features, DhrubaJyoti Phukan got the best music direction award for the film ‘Panchaki’ by Sanjeev Rattan which also received the best short fiction film award, while the audiography award went to Gautam Nair for the Hindi short ‘1, 2’.
Spandan Banerjee’s ‘You don’t belong’ in Bengali and English received a Special Mention for creating an enjoyable musical journey that reveals the growth of a song from the pen of a poet to mainstream culture.
The best book on cinema award went to Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal for ‘RD Burman: the man, the music’.