Kalakar Awards or Kalakar Puraskar (Bengali: কলাকার পুরস্কার )[1] ceremony is one of the most prominent film events given for Bengali Cinemas in India.
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Kalakar Awards is recognized as one of the leading awards ceremonies of Eastern India. The brand Kalakar is all about a vision and the relentless pursuit towards its success. It all started off 23 years ago when Shri Ashok Kalanauria came up with a stirring vision.
Kolkata, the home to the finest in cinema, television, stage and music with its very own Tollywood, lacked the institution of annual awards for the most talented and outstanding. Finally this dream turned into reality on 1 January 1993 when the very first Kalakar Awards were hosted at G. D. Birla Sabhaghar.
It was a night to remember, with the honoring and felicitating of several artistes for excellence in their work, it wrote a new chapter in the history of Award Ceremonies. This was a stepping stone and a beginning of this exciting journey which gave us a chance to show, the people who entertain us, how much we care for them. Year after year, we have been taking this opportunity to give accolades to not only Tollywood Stars but also Stars from Bollywood, by awarding them the lady statuette. The first step which was taken by Mr. Kalanauria, seventeen years ago, has resulted in this grand spectacle that is now held at the Science City Auditorium, Kolkata.
The list of Kalakar awardees runs into hundreds, some of the prominent stars include:
From Bollywood : Sadhana Sargam, Dharmendra, Shammi Kapoor, Biswajit, Rishi Kapoor, Shatrughan Sinha, Manoj Bajpai, Farooque Shaikh, Pradeep Kumar, Asrani, A. K. Hangal, Amrish Puri , Raj Babbar, Prakash Mehra, B. R. Chopra, Ravi Chopra, Jaspal Bhatti, Vyjayantimala, Asha Parekh, Rani Mukherjee, Shabana Azmi, Neena Gupta, Ila Arun, Nandita Das, Naushad, Bappi Lahiri, Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, Sonu Nigam, Hariharan, Jagjit Singh and Remo Fernandes. Padmini Kolhapure, Jaya Prada, Celina Jaitley, Koena Mitra, Madhur Bhandarkar, Konkona Sen, Deepti Naval, Farida Jalal, Daler Mehndi, Pankaj Udhas, Aadesh Srivastav, Randhir Kapoor, Shiney Ahuja, Mahesh Bhatt, Mukesh Bhatt, Emraan Hashmi, Farhan Akhtar, Prachi Desai, Sonal Chauhan, Kailash Kher. Sudesh Bhonsle
From Tollywood : Tarun Majumdar, Mrinal Sen, Gautam Ghosh, Aparna Sen, Ranjit Mullick, Soumitra Chatterjee, Victor Banerjee, Mamata Shankar, Rupa Ganguly, Rituparna Sengupta, Prosenjit, Chiranjeet, Debashree Roy, Anjan Dutta, Tapas Paul, Usha Uthup, Indrani Haldar, Ananda Shankar & Tanushree Shankar, Koel Mullick and Jeet. Indrani Dutta, Arjun Chakraborty, Bikram Ghosh, Shatabdi Roy, Churni Ganguly, Moon Moon Sen, Koneenika Bandyopadhyay, Haimanti Shukla.
From the Sub Continent : Runa Laila from Bangladesh, Ghulam Ali from Pakistan and Sushil Chetri & Malini Manandhar from Nepal. Eva Rahman, Geetali Hassan, Arifa Praveen Zamil Mousumi from Bangladesh.
From the Television : Neena Gupta, Kanwaljeet, Dara Singh, Jaspal Bhatti, Reena Wadhwa, Ali Azgar, Urvashi Dholakia, Ruby Bhatia, Ronit Roy, Kiran Karmakar, Saksh Tanwar, Jaya Bhattacharyya, Jaya Sil, Sharad Kelkar, Prachi Desai, Ekbal Khan, Reena Kapoor, Priya Bhattacharyya, Ekta Kapoor, Rajeev Khandelwal, Aamna Shariff, Mir, Debojeet, Divyanka Tripathy, Sharad Malhotra, Aditya Narayan, Karan Grover.
The team behind the Kalakar Awards comprises professionals from different walks of life, like the public services, police services, banking sector, business and corporate houses and also from NGO's and cultural organizations. This like minded group of people comes together each year to organize this grand celebration. Each one brings his or her own expertise and together unfolds the annual Kalakar Awards, which is now in its 18th year. The quest is common, to continue honoring the exceptional talents of Bollywood and Tollywood. And to keep the Kalakar Awards flag fluttering high in the winds of Cinema, Television, & Entertainment .