The South Asian Cinema Foundation (SACF) will honour lyricist, writer, filmmaker and producer Amit Khanna on 17th October with the ‘Excellence in Cinema’ award for his overall contribution to Indian cinema, television and digital media for more than five decades.
SACF has earlier honoured M.S. Sathyu, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Girish Kasaravalli, Gulzar, Shyam Benegal and Vishal Bhardwaj.
After receiving the honour, Amit Khanna will be in conversation with SACF director, film historian and documentary filmmaker Lalit Mohan Joshi about his life and work. Professionally trained singer Rajan Shegunshi will render popular lyrics of Amit Khanna.
Amit Khanna started his film career as an executive producer, writer and lyricist for actor-filmmaker Dev Anand’s Navketan in 1971. He was actively involved in the making of Manpasand, Des Pardes and Lootmaar. He had by then become a lyricist. To-date, he has penned nearly 400 film and non-film songs, and a dozen scripts for feature films and documentaries. In the eighties, he wrote, directed and produced several films. Amit Khanna, set up Plus channel in 1989. It was India’s first integrated media and entertainment company. In Plus Channel, he produced 11 feature films, over 3,000 hours of original TV programming and 500 music albums in various genres and languages. Amit Khanna also directed India’s first music video with Nazia and Zoeb Hassan in 1984. He was also the executive producer of TV serial Buniyaad (1986). He has authored two book, Anant Raag: Infinite Verse (2013) and Words Sounds Images: A History of Media and Entertainment in India (2019).