Premier Christy Clark is expect-ed to announce Tuesday that Van-couver has been chosen to host the inaugural edition of The Times of India Film Awards.

The mega event is expected to attract a host of A-listers from Bol-lywood and foster trade and tourism ties between B.C. and India.

Details of the announcement have been kept under wraps as specula-tion on the scope of the event has been circulating in the Indo-Cana-dian community.

Among those expected at Tues-day’s press conference are Indi-an film director Karan Johar, Bol-lywood starlet Chitrangada Singh and world-renowned choreogra-pher Shaimak Davar.

Clark is also expected to announce the province’s financial commit-ment to the show, which is expected to be around $10 million and which will also include an India-B.C. busi-ness forum.

Bollywood, the mainstay of India’s movie industry, produces about 1,000 films a year and is celebrating its 100th anniversary.

The Bollywood event in Vancouver is not part of the International Indi-an Film Academy (IIFA) awards, also known as the Bollywood Oscars.

A bid from the British Columbia government on behalf of Vancou-ver for those awards was rejected for 2013, said a statement from IIFA organizers, Wizcraft International.

The bidding process for the IIFA awards is currently on with a number of countries from the Middle East,

South America, Europe and Africa vying for the Bollywood extravaganza to come to their city, the Indo-Asian News Service IANS reported.

“The decision is sub-ject to many contributing factors that are required of a host destination in terms of support-initiatives for Hindi cine-ma production, funding and distri-

bution; event-funding, support, facilitation, and infrastructure,” said Sabbas Joseph, director, IIFA and Wizcraft Inter-national. “We are com-mitted to the film indus-try and hosting an IIFA in any destination must

meet the larger interests of Indian cinema and a spectacular staging of the annual celebration,” he added.

The dates and venue for the 2013 edition of the IIFA Weekend and Awards will be formally announced soon.

In 2011, IIFA successfully for-ayed into North America, marking its première in Canada, in the city of Toronto. Following its success there, there was keen interest from the country to play host once more in 2013, with Christy Clark, the Pre-mier of British Columbia, formally

extending an invitation to the orga-nizers to hold its 14th edition in Vancouver.

Over the years, IIFA has already been to destinations like London, Yorkshire, Johannesburg, Dubai, Amsterdam, Singapore, Bangkok, Colombo and Macau.

Full details of the Bollywood event in Vancouver will be on Vancou-verDesi.com as it is announced.

— VancouverDesi.com

Bollywood sets sights on B.C.MEGA EVENT: Premier to announce inaugural India !lm awards show for Vancouver

B5 THEPROVINCE.COM | E-TODAY | TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2013

Bollywood film actress Chitrangada Singh is said to be in Vancouver for the launch of the Times Of India Film Awards. ! GETTY IMAGES FILES

“The decision is subject to many contributing factors that are required of a host destination ...” — Sabbas Joseph

LYNN SAXBERGPOSTMEDIA NEWS

Colin James added more hardware to his trophy cabinet Monday when he was honoured as entertainer of the year in the 16th annual Maple Blues Awards in Toronto.

The North Vancouver-based sing-er-songwriter-guitarist broke a six year dry spell. He has already won more than a dozen of the Canadi-an blues awards since their incep-tion in 1997.

B.C. musician, guitarist Steve Kozak, reeled in the best new art-ist trophy, despite the fact that he’s been a fixture of the Vancouver scene since the mid-’80s.

Ottawa trio MonkeyJunk continued to flex its might on the Canadian blues scene by winning another three tro-phies. Matching their triple haul was Hamilton guitarist Steve Strongman.

With MonkeyJunk off to sea for a week on a star-studded blues cruise, in their absence the night belonged to Strongman. The talented sing-

er-guitarist took home the record-ing of the year award for his acous-tic album, A Natural Fact, and was hailed as the year’s best songwriter and guitarist of the year. He was also one of the evening’s performers.

Singer-songwriter Suzie Vinn-ick, who grew up in Saskatoon and is now based in Toronto, also had a good night, earning her first award for best acoustic act and her seventh as female vocalist of the year. Male vocalist went to New Brunswick’s Matt Andersen.

East Coast legend Matt Mingle-wood was rewarded with a lifetime achievement award, and a founding member of the Toronto Blues Soci-ety, John Valenteyn, received the Blues Booster award.

In the instrumental categories, Downchild’s Gary Kendall picked up the bassist award, 24th Street Wailer Jon Wong took home the horn play-er award and David Vest secured the accolade for keyboardists. The Tede-schi Trucks Band was again crowned international artist of the year.

Colin James entertainer of the year at Maple Blues Awards

Colin James won entertainer of the year at the Maple Blues Awards. STUART DAVIS/PNG