The function acknowledged growth of a new genre of film-making--that of the untainted entertainment--with a special band of noted personalities taking the stage led by A.H. Mofazzal Karim, Chairman of the Festival Committee who also presided the function. He was followed by Golam Rabbani, Festival Director; chief guest Sadeque Hossain Khoka, Mayor of Dhaka Metropolitan City Corporation; special guest Azam J. Chowdhury, Managing Director of Mobil Jamuna Lubricants Ltd. Jury Board Chairman Shafiq Rehman, accompanied by the Members of the Jury Board--Bente Talstadmaalen from Norway; Ranjanee Pathnauibhushanra from Srilanka, Justino Dormiendo from Philippines and Paolo Minute from Italy, was also present on the stage.

The speakers took the dais one by one with Golam Rabbani making the introduction. He emphasized on the fact of producing quality movies and clean picture. The crowd turnout for such films pleased him, which proved the need for stain-free amusement.

Azam J. Chowdhury reiterated the same facts and also added that the festival's promotion of excellent pictures as success. He felt that such occasions should help both the audience and the filmmaker. Finally, he committed Mobil's continuous participation to support such programmes for social causes.

Jury Board head Shafiq Rehman took the podium to conduct the award distribution. He introduced the Jury Board Members from onstage. Adding on his speech, he remarked the accomplishment of 'serene films' as the ultimate winner. He believed that the overall management of the occasion could make use of some more improvement, he said. 'The city has given birth to yet another child -the film festival. Please take the baby and now it is up to you to see for the betterment', conveyed Shafiq Rehman while directing a speech towards the Mayor.

Jury Board Members then made the long-anticipated official presentation to the winning films. Lesson One: a Wail, the movie from India clinched Best Picture Award collected by Aryadan Shoukath Ali, the script writer. He received the Don Quixote Certificate from Paolo Minute from Italy, and $3,000 prize money from Azam J. Chowdhury as the Mobil award. The runner-up statuette was picked by Nabin Subba from Nepal for the movie A Beautiful Flower.

There were two special prizes for two movies, Lal Shalu from Bangladesh picked by Tanvir Mokammel, and Little Angel from Sri Lanka with Somaratne Dissanayake, each collecting the honour and $1,000.

In the midst of all the celebrations, the organising committee took out time for a quiet homage and a special award from the film industry to Rahman--an eminent actor of the 1950s-'60s. A.H. Mofazzal received it on behalf of Rahman.

The evening was wrapped up with another noted speaker Mofazzal Karim. His role as master of ceremony, kept the audience smiling with his spontaneous speech mentioning unadulterated entertainment ruling over the so-called commercial hits. He mentioned the record number turnover of overwhelmed viewers in the last one week to see the films from the festival.

It was evident from the award ceremony that the films that won tried to portray child marriage, polygamy, religious pressure and cultural transition as burning issues.

Speakers agreed that films can be a means to mass consciousness built to protest against such unethical views.