Well done Tony

Spoke to a friend in Kolkata who attended the felicitation party of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and his team for bagging the National Award (Golden Lotus) for the Best Bengali film in 2009 hosted by Mumbai Mantra at The Park which I missed. I was told that the film fraternity turned up in full strength at the party.

With this Award, Aniruddha (Tony) has joined the illustrious list of filmmakers from Bengal like Debaki Kumar Bose, Satyajit Roy, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Utpalendu Chakraborty, Gautam Ghosh, Rituparno Ghosh and others who have been honoured in the past. The function that would formally confer the Award to Tony for his film Antaheen is scheduled for March 2010 in Delhi.

Recently, Indrani and Tony were in my house for dinner along with few writers and Shabana Azmi (picture). Tony and I happen to have many common friends. About two weeks back I jokingly told one his closest friends “I pity Tony has friends like you who were indifferent to their friend’s achievement and success. ” My motive was to persuade them all to organise a public function in Kolkata to felicitate him.

Tony’s achievements are quite stellar. Though he has directed just two films so far, both his films have won awards. His first film Anuranan won the award for the Best Feature Film in Bengali in 2008 and now he has again scored it with Antaheen in 2009 in four categories including the Best Bengali film.

Tony has made us all feel proud. Well done Tony.
We look forward to 2010 as well!

ess bee