NEW DELHI: The ninth annual Bollywood Awards slated to be held in New York in May have got underway with fans of Indian cinema all over the world getting an opportunity to nominate their favourite film stars for each respective award category.

The awards function for which several Bollywood and Hollywood stars have confirmed participation is set to take place on Saturday 26 May at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, New York.
The various stars and categories are listed on the Bollywood Group’s official web site, www.bollywoodawards.com.

Kamal Dandona, Chairman of the Bollywood Awards, told indiantelevision.com that superstar Akshay Kumar and the world-renowned star Danny Glover of “Lethal Weapon” fame have confirmed participation.

The Bollywood Group also hosts the annual international Bollywood Music Awards and the Bollywood Fashion Awards. Zeenat Aman and Rajesh Khanna received the Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Eighth Annual Bollywood Awards 2006 at the Centre of Excellence in Macoya, Trinidad on 10 June last year. Meanwhile, TitleMatch Entertainment Group which is a subsidiary of Protocall Technologies Incorporated, a leading provider of DVD on-demand systems for retailers and retailers, has entered into a strategic partnership with the Bollywood Group to establish licensing agreements with top movie companies in the booming Bollywood film industry.

Movies from India are the number one grossing foreign film category in the United States, with annual revenue estimated at $1.5 billion. The category is expected to grow 16 per cent annually over the next five years – bringing the market to over $3 billion by 2011. Protocall Technologies (www.protocall.com) Incorporated is the innovator of CD and DVD on-demand content distribution. Its flagship TitleMatchTM system allows retailers to burn brand name CD and DVD products at their stores and website distribution centers.