T V Chandran bags John Abraham award

National award winning Malayalam filmmaker T.V. Chandran"s Bhoomi Malayalam (2008) and Marathi director Paresh Mokashi's Harishchandrachi Factory shared this year"s John Abraham National Awards in the fourth edition of SIGNS, a festival of feature and non-feature films being held for the last eight days at the Kalabhavan Theatre, Thiruvananthapuram.

Umesh Kulkarni"s Three of Us won the award for the best documentary, while Sidhartha Mukherjee"s 100 Watt Bulb was adjudged the best short feature film. The award for the best cinema of resistance went to There was a Gueen by Kavitha Pai and Hansa Tapliyal. The best experimental film is Amit Dutta"s Kramasha.

Malayalam's renowned director Adoor Gopalakrishnan distributed the awards. The awards carry a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh and a citation. Eminent filmmaker Mani Kaul is the chairman of the feature film jury, while Arun Khopkar is the jury head of the non-feature films.

Inaugurated by Culture Minister M.A. Baby on February 12, the eight-day festival showcased 57 documentaries, 58 short films and 22 feature films in the competitions, the main focus of the festival. SIGNS was organized by the Kerala chapter of the Federation of Film Societies of India (FFSI) in association with the Department of Culture, Directorate of Public Relations, Kerala State Film Development Corporation, Kerala State Chalachitra Academy and Thiruvananthapuram City Corporation.