The Nigar Awards announced their nominations the other day and all hell broke loose!
Almost everyone from the industry, us included, could not stop talking about how unfit the nominations were, especially since they were nominations for the prestigious Nigar Awards. Journalists, bloggers and celebrities took to social media to comment on the nominations.
Read more: The Nigar Awards 2017 nominations have been revealed, and they’re funny!
We at Galaxy Lollywood talked to actress Noor Bukhari last night about her film ‘Ishq Positive’ being completely ignored by the awards as the film did not get a single nomination ( not even for Music!). Noor gave us a befitting reply when she mentioned this Punjabi idiom ‘ Bandar day hath maachis ditti , onhay pura pind jalataa’ ( You gave the monkey a match stick and he burned the entire village). Pretty self-explanatory no?
However, the entire Nigar Awards saga took a u-turn today as it was revealed through a press release that the nominations were chosen by the public and not by the jury! Basically, the readers of Nigar Weekly ( A film publication) sent in their preferences via coupons and its based on those preferences that the final nominations were made. Here’s what the press release says:
The Nigar Weekly’s readers choices were communicated to the committee through coupons published in Nigar which were filled by the readers and then sent to the committee. The nominations were finalized based on the readers’ selections which were thoroughly evaluated by the team of Nigar Awards.
And why no Punjabi film made the cut:
Last year, in 2016, a few Punjabi films were released, the quality of which were not up to the mark; therefore the readers did not show much interest in their nominations. Hence this year Punjabi films have not been included.
So this means that all the criticism the awards faced, and are still facing, should be directed toward towards the public and not the jury as we all thought!
What do you have to say about this development?
They should have waited till next year and should have tried to create much hype as possible. This year would have seen bigger and better films and people would be more enthusiastic to watch the awards. Another improvement would have been to not let people vote. This will result in films that were ‘masala’ type to win rather than those that were critically better. I believe that people should not be allowed to vote for such a prestigious awards ceremony but rather the people in the industry just like the Oscars. Staging it next year would have also allowed them time to pick a host, make a good opening monologue and set up rules and regulations. Hope they make it better next time.
Face palm times infinity! Now can anyone tell what’s the difference between ARY AWARDS & NIGARS???????????
This is war! Meet you in court NIGARS!