The environmentally conscious "green carpet" has been rolled out and a collection of Indian cinema's brightest stars have gathered here Saturday for the night known as the Bollywood Oscars.
The awards ceremony concludes the three-day International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) gathering at the giant Venetian resort in Macau, which says all 3,000 suites available for the night have been booked up.
The ceremony will be attended by 500 Bollywood luminaries and an 8,000-strong audience that has flown in from all over the world.
For the Indian film family, the Bachchans, "this is our biggest event," said veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan.
"It is the night when we celebrate everything that makes the Indian film industry great - it is all about entertainment."
Organisers estimate that the awards in the southern Chinese territory will be watched by 500 million TV viewers across the globe.
"We can look back tonight on the way Indian cinema has grown over these years," said actor Anil Kapoor, star of the Oscar-winning hit "Slumdog Millionaire", which was set in the Indian city of Mumbai.
"It is a well-established fact that India produces the greatest number of films in the world today. Needless to say, Indians are crazy about cinema."
The glitzy night will be opened by Bachchan, the IIFA's ambassador, before a spectacular show gets under way.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, former Miss World and Bachchan's daughter-in-law, who is also nominated for the best actress award, will be one of the main draws during the show featuring colourful Indian dances and songs.
Up-and-coming actress Sonam Kapoor, daughter of Anil Kapoor, will make her maiden live performance.
"I might only have to walk a few steps on stage but I fear they might be the longest steps I will ever take," she said.
One of the first to greet fans was veteran actor Kabir Bedi, who starred as the evil Gobina in the 1983 James Bond film "Octopussy."
"This night means the internationalisation of the entire brand of Bollywood," he said. "Brand Bollywood has gone global and you can see that tonight -- it epitomises the best."
Stars Abhishek Bachchan, Sushmita Sen, and Govinda will also be appearing at the ceremony.
The six films vying for the coveted Best Picture award are "Jodhaa Akbar," "Ghajini," "Rock On," "A Wednesday," "Dostana," and "Race."
Film critics' tips for the top honours are divided between Indian epic "Jodhaa Akbar," action-thriller "Ghajini," and "Rock On," a story of four friends reliving their past together as a rock band.
"These three nominations alone can illustrate the diversity of the films that India can offer to the world," Taran Adarsh, a film critic and analyst of Bollywood, told AFP.
The extravaganza, now in its 10th year, is staged outside India every year in an effort to increase the international profile of Bollywood films. It features premieres, media sessions, trade forums, and a grand fashion show.
Previous locations include Bangkok, Johannesburg and Amsterdam.
"What's surprising is that in Mumbai, people in Bollywood do not interact with each other because life there is so hectic. It's only here that we interact with each other," said Adarsh, who has attended almost all the IIFA awards events.
Sabbas Joseph, director of IIFA, told AFP that this year's awards marked a decade of achievement for Bollywood.
"What's exciting is that this is really a golden decade for Indian cinema," he said, stressing that the victory of "Slumdog," which grabbed eight awards at this year's Oscars, was just one of the many examples of the industry's achievement in recent years.
"We have taken our films to many different countries and introduced many different genres," he said.
The event is being held in the aftermath of a damaging row between producers and multiplex cinemas over how box office receipts are split. The dispute was finally settled last week after a two-month stand-off.
Even before the dispute, India's 2.3-billion-dollar film industry was feeling the pinch from the global economic slowdown, reining in budgets and actors' fees as audience numbers dwindled.
"As with everywhere else, we feel the pinch. But the Indian film industry will get through it," Bachchan told AFP.
"None of you know the real me yet". That was Shah Rukh Khan's message to the media, as he geared up to become the brand ambassador of the Korean Tourism Board.
The countdown has begun with as the stars of Bollywood have already started to make their presence felt in Macau for IIFA Awards 2009. Last night many of the biggies from the industry flew to the event.
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