National Film Awards re-structuring is going to happen. The entire scheme of National Film Awards is going to be revamped and the selections for National Film Awards for 2009 will be implemented under this new system. These changes have been done after the recommendations by an Expert Committee headed by eminent filmmaker Shri Shyam Benegal for up-gradation of the National Film Awards.

The re-vamped National Film Awards will have 2-tier selection system in which 5 Regional Panels has been constituted for pre selection of films. The five reginal panels are:

(a) North- English, Punjabi, Dogri, Urdu, Bhojpuri, Rajasthani and Central Indian Languages

(b) West- Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati & Konkani

(c ) South I- Tamil and Malayalam

South II – Kannada, Telugu and Tulu

(d) East- Bengali, Assamese, Oriya and dialects spoken in Northeast

Each Regional Panel will have a Chairperson and one member and 3 other members from with the region. The screenings of the Regional panel as well as the Central jury would be held in Delhi. The Central jury would comprise Chairperson plus 10 Members, of whom 5 would be the Chairpersons of the 5 regional juries

Some new Award Categories are also announced: Audiography, Music Direction, Best screenplay and Dialogues

The cash prize for several award in both feature films and non-feature films categories have been increased. The sitting Fee of Jury Members have been hiked from Rs.1000/- per day to Rs.2500/- per day.

(press release)