71st National Film Awards, 2023: A Travesty of Purpose

71st National Film Awards jury members at the announcement

The 71st National Film Awards for 2023 were announced on Friday, 1 August 2025. It is shocking to discover that the National Film Award for the Best Book on Cinema (books published in 2023) was not announced. Matters were made even more conspicuous by the mention of 27 books submitted for the competition. One may note that this particular award, to support important documentation on different aspects of Indian cinema, was introduced in 1981. Since then, till the 70th NFA for 2022, announced in 2024, there had been 42 occasions without a break when 47 books were bestowed this honour. Five times, 2 books were joint winners.

We should do well to take cognizance of the fact that perhaps in the history of the NFA, there is no exact parallel to the present.

Just to give more context to this issue, the last date of application was 18 September 2024 and the last date for receipt of the hard copy of the submitted online application form along with the requisite material was 25 September 2024.

We were told there were three members of the jury. Why couldn’t they, as is expected of this important role, read and judge the books for 10 months to produce a winner? A veteran film critic tried to reason that the juries were handed over the books very late and it was impossible for them to read them within the time allotted to them. Whether such an assumption is accurate leaves a doubt. Also, there is no inkling about how the juries were asked to go about doing this task. However, if time was indeed short, the Chairman of the Jury could have distributed the 27 books in lots of 9 each among the 3 of them. Each could have chosen the best from their list of 9, and from that final shortlist of 3, the winner could have been selected. Each jury member needed to read 11 books in total then, instead of a daunting 27, just a suggestion.

But we will never know what their strategy was, when the juries were brought on board, whether time was ample for them to decide. The questions are many and loud as the official silence is prolonged beyond a week.

If we step back and ponder, it baffles why none of these 27 books were considered worthy of the award. If that is true, then it is indeed a point of grave concern, for the film-viewing culture of the country. Does this mean that writing on Indian cinema in the different languages has reached its nadir? Nothing would be a greater or a meaner lie. The representatives of the awards have left nothing but keen bitterness and smouldering indignation in its wake.

Or there is something more to it than what meets the naked eye?

When an award that has been conferred for four decades without a break is not announced without even a mention of the reason, the silence turns to subjugation. It is this silence which uno actu extinguishes the belief in the minds of writers and anyone else associated with cinema in India.

This is not a question merely of any favour shown to the writers of books on cinema. If the ministerial organisations have any meaning, the administrators of such organisations have no right to humiliate writers in this manner.

All writers whose books were part of the competition, by reason of this silence, are forced to be the subjects of an indifferent administrative malevolence. They cannot help it and as vanquished people, they must submit to this lot. But there is no doubt about a travesty of goodwill and purpose.

All this does not touch the people at power in the least that writers of this land face such insult. Or, the general public who has, in matters graver than this as well, memory of disquietingly short relevance.

So, why do I care? Or writers like me who write on cinema for quite some time in languages other than English and about films different than Hindi? The so-called, insignificant hummingbirds of ‘regional’ cinema? Because, every time we think of writing on the cinema of our land, we are bamboozled by the ‘mainstream’, commercial institutes that our writing and our subjects have no ‘market value’. Yet, we trudge along, with our little ammunition, in search of light, which, if not anyone else, we care for. With all its purported biasness, both political and otherwise, the ‘national’ film awards still give us that belief to transcend the territorial boundaries of our land.

By depriving us of this hope, by whitewashing the role that the juries played and by covering up the inactivity and indifference of the administrators managing the awards the 71^st National Film Awards 2023 remains a shame.

And we will not forget.

More Must Read in Silhouette

Why Stories Work: Indepth Analysis and Insights into the Extraordinary Power of Stories

IPR and Indian Cinema: A Scenario of Violation

Tathyachitra: Itihas, Tattwa O Bishleshan – A Review

A Shout Out for an Unclaimed Beloved