Tweeple Film Awards

The Tweeple Film Awards (also called twi-fi awards) is an initiative by Nikhil Taneja (also the co-founder of twi-fi awards) to honour best professionals of Bollywood of India.

History

It was an accidental idea and a passionate idea that came from Nikhil Taneja during a conversation he was having with Soaham Ganguly, Sukhada Chaudhary, Somen Mishra and Ruchi Shah on questionable nominations of Bollywood film awards. But it was an idea that struck a chord with several other lovers of good, quality Hindi cinema, for whom these Awards are now as much their own as is Hindi movies and as is Bollywood. That very night, on January 1, 2011, the Tweeple Film Awards became a trending topic across India, with over 100 followers in a single night. So Nikhil Taneja and his friends decided to take it forward, and soon, everyone joined in. Twi-fi awards currently has 2002 followers in twitter.

Tweet-ups

To carry out the promise of a transparent film awards tweet-ups were organised in several cities of India. The motive behind the tweet-ups was to involve the public from start to finish. An initial tweet-up was carried out in Cafe Goa, Bandra, Mumbai and after its success, it was decided to do simultaneous tweetups across the country on Saturday, January 29, at 6pm. The tweet-up was held at Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune. The tweet-up was held in Kochi on Sunday, January 30, at 10am.

Things that happen in tweet-ups

1. One coordinator would fix a venue and everyone interested in attending would have to RSVP to that person before-hand.
2. One person, if not more, is required to live tweet the tweet-up, sending all their tweets to http://twitter.com/twi_fi_awards, adding the hashtag #TwiFi. The tweets are then re-tweeted so everyone in other parts of the country can know what's happening at the discussions.
3. One person, if not more, is required to compile the flow of the discussion after it's over – telling what was the consensus reached on various issues.
4. The tweetups would have to stick to the agenda of queries/suggestions/advice that comes up in majority.

Procedure for nominations

The rules of the awards have come mostly through discussion with the people on Twitter.

1. A 60 member film jury, consisting of India's most respected film critics as well as 30 film buffs chosen through voting on Twitter, has been formed. 70 film buffs were nominated for the ‘Tweeple jury’ out of which 30 were selected through a voting process that spanned 3 days, and where over a 1000 votes were cast from countries as far as USA, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Singapore and Malaysia.
2. A separate jury of 11 music critics and 11 music buffs has been formed for the music section of the awards.
3. In the next few days, through tweetups across the country, the categories of the awards will be finalised. Once the categories are finalised, every member of the jury will individually nominate his/her best of the year. A cumulative of all the nominations will be taken and that will form the final nominee list.
4. Then, voting will happen, mostly across internet and mobile platforms, as sponsors have shown interest in the awards.
5. There is talk of an on-ground ceremony happening as of now, and the discussion with event management companies that have shown interest in making this award an on-ground event is on. Talks with companies about telecasting or streaming the awards live on the internet is also in process.

List of the film critics on the jury

The critics on the film jury are:

1. Ajay Brahmatmaj - Dainik Jagran
2. Ajit Duara
3. Aniruddha Guha - DNA
4. Anna Vetticad - Headlines Today
5. Anupama Chopra - NDTV
6. Aseem Chhabra
7. Baradwaj Rangan - New Indian Express
8. Bikas Mishra - DearCinema.com
9. Gaurav Solanki -Tehelka Hindi
10. Kaveree Bamzai - India Today
11. Mayank Shekhar - Hindustan Times
12. Meeta Kabra - Wogma.com
13. Mihir Fadnavis - India.com
14. Minty Tejpal - Mumbai Mirror
15. Namrata Joshi - Outlook
16. Nandini Ramnath - Time Out
17. Pavan Jha - BBC India
18. Pragya Tiwari - Tehelka
19. Pratim Das Gupta - The Telegraph
20. Raghuvendra S - Dainik Jagran
21. Raja Sen - Rediff.com
22. Rajveen Masand - CNN IBN
23. Sameer panje - Cinemaaonline.com
24. Sanjukta Sharma - Mint Lounge
25. Shubha Shetty Saha - iibnlive.com
26. Shubhra Gupta - Indian Express
27. Sudhish Kamath - The Hindu
28. Sukanya Verma - Rediff.com
29. Udita Jhunjhunwala - Mumbaiboss.com

The critics on the music jury are:

1. Amit Gurbaxani - Mumbaiboss.com
2. Chirag Sutar - Soundbox.com
3. Harshit Gupta - happysing.com
4. Lalitha Suhasini
5. Nikhil Taneja - MTVIndia.com
6. Pavan Jha - BBC India
7. Raja Sen - Rediff.com
8. S Karthik - Milliblog.com
9. Shivam Sharma - musicdip.in
10. Suparna Thombra
11. Vipin Nair - musicaloud.com

Media coverage of TwiFi

Over its start the twi-fi awards is lucky to get media attention in very short span. Here are the media where the articles related to twi-fi has been published:

1. Mumbai Mirror – January 11, 2011
2. HT City, Mumbai – January 11, 2011
3. HT Cafe, Mumbai – January 14, 2011
4. Bangalore Mirror – January 16, 2011
5. Telegraph Kolkata - January 18, 2011
6. Mid-Day, Mumbai – January 20, 2011
7. HT Cafe, Mumbai – January 20, 2011
8. Prabhat Khabar, all editions – January 21, 2011
9. Deccan Chronicle – January 22, 2011
10. Open Magazine – January 22, 2011
11. Asian Age - January 22, 2011
12. CNNGo.com - January 24, 2011
13. The News, Pakistan - January 24, 2011

See also

• Cinema of India

External links

• http://www.facebook.com/notes/tweeple-film-awards/faq-section/135051743220542
• http://www.facebook.com/TwiFiAwards