Last night the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Weekend continued with IIFA Rocks, a musical entertainment extravaganza hosted at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
So, what do you do when it rains all day and your big event is to be held in an open air stadium?
Revise your plans. Revise again. Improvise. Adjust.
Despite the daylong deluge of rain, the hopes of the media, performers, and audience members remained high. Even as dark clouds dominated the sky after the rains relinquished their rule in the early evening hours, people began to gather at the stadium for the evening's event.
For the media, the Green Carpet arrival is a high point and an opportunity to photograph and interview celebrities of the Indian film industry.
But by 5:00 pm, an hour before the Green Carpet event was set to begin, the carpet itself was drenched and the walkway backdrops were removed.
As media continued to gather at the press entrance, they were told the Green Carpet was canceled for the evening.
Then it wasn't.
Then it was.
Then it wasn't.
An email received at 7:01 pm, an hour after the Green Carpet was originally scheduled to begin, stated:
Greetings from IIFA!
This is to bring to your notice that due to the weather conditions the IIFA Rocks Green Carpet has been cancelled.
We apologized for the inconvenience caused.
Best,
Team IIFA
But Bollywood media are also Bollywood fans and they are not easily swayed. Soon an in-person announcement from the staff at MetLife confirmed that the Green Carpet event would take place.
With IIFA Rocks performances heard in the background, media crowded around a significantly smaller portion of the Green Carpet to take photos and interview celebrities.
And it was so worth it.
Hosted by Riteish Deshmukh and Manish Paul, IIFA Rocks celebrated 25 years of the musical genius A. R. Rahman in the industry with a mesmerizing 90-minute performance alongside a first time medley by Hariharan, Kailash Kher, Mika Singh, Mohit Chauhan, Jonita Gandhi, Neeti Mohan, Javed Ali, Kamaal Khan and Haricharan Seshadri among others. Adding to the extensive list of IIFA Rocks lineup, Aditi Rao Hydari captivated the audiences with her powerhouse vocal performance.
IIFA Rocks also recognized those who had achieved excellence in the technical field. The romantic drama Ae Dil Hai Mushkil lead the list of winners by walking away with four awards in the technical category including Background Score (Pritam), Best Engineer (Shadab Rayeen), Cinematography (Anil Mehta, ISC, WICA) and Costume Designing (Manish Malhotra). Other winners in the Technical category featured:
- The courtroom drama Pink won Best Dialogue (Ritesh Shah), Best Screenplay (Ritesh Shah), and Best Editing (Bodhaditya Bandyopadhyay).
- The romantic sports drama Sultan won Best Action (Larnell Stovall, Parvez Shaikh, `ANL` Arasu) and Best Sound Mixing (Anuj Mathur).
- The comedy drama Kapoor and Sons won Best Choreography (Adil Shaikh) for the song "Kar Gayi Chull".
- The epic fantasy romantic thriller Mirzya won Best Sound Design (Pranav Shukla).
- The psychological thriller Fan won Best Make up (Greg Cannom) and Best Special Effects Visual (Red Chillies VFX).
- The biographical thriller Neerja won Best Production Design (Aparna Sud & Anna Ipe).
Myntra’s Style Icon Award was presented Youth Icon Alia Bhatt at the event.
The following Storify collection features IIFA Rocks 2017 image and tweet highlights. Mouseover the image to view the tweet text.
Blog Photo Credit: Jim Dooley, Falling in Love With Bollywood
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