'We always wanted to come to America'

Bollywood’s biggest overseas event, the IIFA Awards, will be held in the US for the first time. Aseem Chhabra reports.

It started off 15 years ago as a Bollywood awards event at London’s Millennium Dome. Since that year, the International Indian Film Awards has traveled around the world to cities like Macau, Singapore, Dubai, Toronto and Amsterdam.

It will now be held for the first time in the United States, in Tampa Bay, Florida.

On January 15, the IIFA organisers, Tampa Bay officials, and Bollywood stars Anil Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra spoke to the Indian-American media in New York City, where they announced plans for the Tata Motors IIFA Awards 2014, scheduled for April 24-26.

“IIFA is designed to celebrate Indian cinema across the world,” organiser Viraf Sarkari, director, Wizcraft International, said. “The idea is to take India, Indian cinema and the stars closer to global Indians and introduce newer territories for the films. That’s exactly the job IIFA is doing.”

When IIFA began, Sarkari said, the US seemed far away. “We are very happy that we have matured and are coming to America,” he said. “We always wanted to come to America. The time is right now.”

Unlike other awards shows, the three-day IIFA event promises to celebrate the arts, business, entertainment and glamour aspects of Bollywood, including discussions, film workshops, media briefings, the FICCI-IIFA Global Business Forum, the IIFA Rocks fashion show with live music, IIFA Magic of the Movies, technical awards and the main awards ceremony.

“There will be parties everyday,” Sarkari said, adding that tickets for the show were already on sale.

The process of getting IIFA and Tampa Bay together was a journey that started about nine months ago, said Santiago Corrado, president and chief executive officer, Visit Tampa Bay. 

“We understood the power of IIFA and the power to create a destination to become a gateway to India,” Corrado said. “And IIFA understood our destination (Tampa Bay), but a destination not known throughout the world. We want to share our great city with the world. We have the greatest people, wonderful accommodation, incredible shopping and dinning. And IIFA was able to identify what we wanted to do.”

 

“It is more than just the economic impact for us,” he added. “It was beyond money. It was about establishing a relationship with India, Wizcraft and Indian cinema.”

 

He identified why IIFA had selected Tampa Bay as the first American city to host