Coronavirus: India’s Frames Conference to Continue Without Italy, IIFA Awards Postponed

By Naman Ramachandran

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Two of India’s leading media industry events have taken contrasting approaches to the spread of coronavirus in the country.

The annual Frames media conference, organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), had announced Italy as their country partner for the 2020 edition due March 18-20 in Mumbai. The conference will go ahead as scheduled, FICCI announced Friday, but without Italian participation.

“We would like to inform you that Italy is not participating at FICCI 2020 due to recent outbreak of Novel disease in Italy,” FICCI said in a statement. “So, there won’t be any delegation from Italy in FICCI Frames 2020. Hence no B2B meetings with Italy will be organized at the event.”

This year the inaugural industry address is to be delivered by Uday Shankar, president, the Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific, and chairman, Star & Disney.

The International Indian Film Academy’s () 21st annual awards extravaganza was due to take place in the cities of Bhopal and Indore in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh from March 27-29. The event has now been postponed and its new dates have yet to be announced.

“With due regard to the growing concerns around the spread of the COVID-19 virus and keeping the health and safety of IIFA’s fans and the general community at large, after consulting the Madhya Pradesh government, the IIFA management, and stakeholders from the film industry it has been decided to postpone to a later date the much-awaited IIFA Weekend and Awards 2020 celebrations, which were originally scheduled at the end of March 2020,” organizers Wizcraft International Entertainment said in a statement on Friday.

The IIFA awards is a peripatetic event that has variously been held at Johannesburg, Singapore, Dubai, Bangkok, Macau, Toronto and Mumbai. This year, the awards were to be hosted by Bollywood superstar Salman Khan and popular actor Riteish Deshmukh, featuring a music performance by Oscar, BAFTA and Grammy winner A.R. Rahman (“Slumdog Millionaire”), and appearances by stars Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Jacqueline Fernandez and Hrithik Roshan.

India has 31 positive coronavirus cases so far that includes 14 Italian nationals.