Bhansali's <i>Black</i> bags 11 black beauty statues in Filmfare awards

Mumbai: It was Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film Black which stole the 51st Fair One Filmfare Awards show by bagging a whopping 11 awards here last evening.

The film won all the major awards including Best Director, Best Male Actor, Best Female Actor, besides the Critics awards and a few technical awards.

Amitabh Bachchan, Rani Mukherjee, child artiste Ayesha Kapoor and Sanjay Leela Bhansali won both Popular and Critics awards for Black.

This was Mr Bachchan's first function after recovering from his surgery late last year.

Big B won the Best Male Actor, while Rani collected her trophy as the Best Actress for Black, besides other awards.

Accepting the Best Director award, Mr Bhansali said, ''I will not thank Mr Bachchan for Black, as he is above us. He has given a world class performance in the movie.'' The awards in the technical category were given to Bela Sehgal for Best Editing in Black, Ravi Chandran for Best Cinematography (Black), Monty Sharma for Best Background Score (Black), Keshto Mondal for Best Art Direction (Parineeta), Vishwadeep Chatterjee for Best Sound Design (Parineeta) and Allan Amin for Best Action (Dus).

Best Screenplay award was presented to Manoj Tyagi and Nina Arora for Page 3, Best Dialogues award to Prakash Jha for Apharan and the Best Story was recieved by Sudhir Mishra, Ruchi Narian and Shiv Kumar Subramaniam for Hazaaro Khywahishain Aisi.

After six years, Madhuri Dixit danced on her Devdas songs, which were choreographed by Saroj Khan.

Aishwarya Rai performed 'Kajra re' from Bunty aur Babli, while Abhishek Bachchan on 'First Love' from Bluffmaster.

Shamita Shetty paid a tribute to Parveen Babi by performing on the late actress' songs from Shaan.

Among others who performed were Shaimak Davar and Lara Dutta.

Popular awards included the Best Debut Male award which went to Shiney Ahuja for Hazaaro Khywahishain Aisi and Best Debut Female was bagged by Vidya Balan for Parineeta. She also won the Face of the year award.

The R D Burman award was given to Shantanu Moitra. The other awards were Best Music award given to 'Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy' for Bunty aur Babli, Actor in Villainous Role was given to Nana Patekar for Apharan, Abhishek Bachchan as Supporting Actor for Sarkar, Actor in Comic Role was presented to Akshay Kumar in Garam Masala, Himesh Reshamiyya for Best Title Track and Gulzar for Best Lyrics for 'Kajra re' in Bunty aur Babli. Alisha Chenai won the Best Playback Singer award for 'Kajra re' and she thanked Aishwarya Rai for making the song popular.

Shabana Azmi was given the 'Lifetime Achievement Award' by Rani Mukherjee who said, ''Shabana is the winner of five best actress National Awards and many international awards. Her powerhouse performances spoke for themselves.'' Rani further said Shabana started her career with Ankur and went on to do many commercial and off-beat films with veteran directors like Shyam Benegal.

An audio visual of Yash Chopra's films was shown as he and his son Aditya Chopra were given the 'Power House Talent Award' for their vision and body of work.

Amitabh Bachchan, who presented the award to Yash Chopra, said: ''Mr Chopra should have won this award 20 years ago.'' The grand evening was concluded by Hollywood actor Will Smith who announced and presented the Best Actress award to Rani Mukherjee for Black.

The comperes were VJ Cyrus Broacha, Pooja Batra, Tabu, Lara Dutta and Javed Jaffri, who kept the audience in splits with his witty jokes.