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Winner for Best Movie of the Year ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ producer Christian Colson gives an acceptance speech. The movie won a whopping eight awards. Picture AFP

Feb 23rd The day when history was created when the SM team won 8 out of its 10 nominations. I was delighted to see Slumdog Millionaire sweep the 81st Academy Awards. The team truly deserves the praise and accolades showered on them for the effort that they would have put in to make this a huge success. I am particularly proud of AR Rahman and Resul Pookutty won 3 Oscar’s between them. Both of them have won it for India for the first time in their respective categories. Slumdog Millionaire is yet another example of global collaboration, artist from different parts of the world have collaborated to come up with a masterpiece.

Things I dint knew about Slumdog Millionaire and found it on Wikipedia:

• Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British drama film directed by Danny Boyle, co-directed by Loveleen Tandan, and written by Simon Beaufoy. It is an adaptation of the Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-nominated novel Q & A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup.
• Danny Boyle is an Academy Award-winning English director and film producer, best known for his work on films such as Trainspotting, Sunshine, and 28 Days Later. In 2009 Boyle won an Academy Award for Best Director for Slumdog Millionaire.
• Simon Beaufoy (born 1966) is an Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA award-winning British screenwriter. Born in Keighley, he was educated at Ermysted’s Grammar School and Sedbergh School, and graduated from the Arts Institute at Bournemouth. He won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Slumdog Millionaire.
• Resul Pookutty is an Academy Award and BAFTA Award winning Indian film sound designer and mixer. Pookutty hails from vilakkupara, kollam in Kerala. He is a 1995 graduate from Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. He is the first Indian to win an Academy Award for sound mixing.
• The film was made for $13 million – a tenth of the production cost of its Hollywood rival “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.
• The film was based on a book written by a part-time writer – Indian diplomat  Vikas Swarup, who made the best use of his free evenings to come up with “Q & A“.
• Dev Patel is a British film and television actor as well as a martial artist. As an actor, he is known for his performances as Anwar Kharral in the teen drama series Skins and as main protagonist, Jamal Malik in Danny Boyle’s critically acclaimed and multiple Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire (2008), for which Patel won a number of awards, including a Critics’ Choice Award and Screen Actors Guild Award, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.  As a martial artist, he is a black belt in Taekwondo and was a bronze medallist at the 2004 AIMAA World Championships in Dublin.
• Freida Pinto (born October 18, 1984) is an Indian actress and professional model, best known for her performance as Latika in her debut film Slumdog Millionaire, an eight time Academy Award winner, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2008. Pinto won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
• Complete list of awards for Slumdog Millionaire here

Interesting infromation about India and Oscars

• Bhanu Athiya was first Indian ever to win an Oscar for costume design in the year 1982 for the movie Gandhi.
• Satyajit Ray was awarded an honorary Oscar for his contribution to cinema in 1992
• AR Rahman is the first Indian to win 2 Oscars.
• Resul pokutty is the first Indian and only Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing.
• Read more about India’s official entry here

The success of Slumdog Millionaire will surely help the prospects of Indian film industry in collaborating future projects at a truley global level. AR RAhman and Resul Pookutty has set the stage for Indian artists aborad and i am sure this will open up multiple window of opportunities for Indian artists giving them exposure and experience at global level

Jai HO.