Newcomer director Rakeysh Mehra and his film about idealism swept eight awards, while Bollywood heartthrob Hrithik Roshan won the Best Actor for his role as a superhero at the Global Indian Film Awards.

The five-hour Oscar-style event, which ended early Sunday, was marred by several goofs ups including missed cues by program hosts, flat jokes, awkward pauses and long-winded speeches. The heavy ball on top of the award statuette came unstuck and fell off several times.

Besides winning the Best Director award for Mehra, ``Rang De Basanti'' also won for best actress in a supporting role, music, lyrics, editing, background score, art direction and screenplay.

"Wow what a year,'' said Mehra, hailing the good films produced in 2006 by Bollywood, as the Mumbai-based Indian film industry is known. It produces more than 800 movies a year, three times that of Hollywood.

"Rang De Basanti,'' Mehra's second directorial venture, is a twin narrative juxtaposing a group of youngsters in the present day with Indian revolutionaries fighting for independence from British colonial rule in the early 1900s.

The common thread in their stories is the fight against oppression - British rule then and corruption now - and standing up for one's beliefs.

The Best Film award went to Lage Raho Munnabhai, which takes a lighthearted approach to convey the non-violence philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.

The comedy, starring Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi as two Mumbai goons, was such a hit that even the Indian Parliament hailed it as a handy way to revive Gandhi's teachings. The film also won the awards for Best Story and Best Dialogues.

Hrithik Roshan won the Best Actor award for "Krrish,'' India's first modern superhero action film, shot mostly in Singapore. The film also won the Best Action and Best Sound Design awards.

The Global Indian Film Awards came to Malaysia in its second annual edition to an audience where Indian cinema is wildly popular, and stars such as Roshan, Shah Rukh Khan, John Abraham, Salman Khan and Bipasha Basu are household names.

Khan, one of the top paid actors in India, compered part of the show that had a distinctly Bollywood flavor -- interludes between awards were filled by peppy and ear-blasting song-and dance numbers with screen idols gyrating and lip synching on elaborate sets. They were accompanied by troupes in colorful if skimpy clothing.

The appearance of each star - Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Amisha Patel, Priyanka Chopra and Katrina Kaif - drew loud cheers from the audience, many of them from Malaysia's ethnic Indian population.

Also present were royalties, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his deputy, Najib Razak.

A limping Khan disappointed fans by announcing he won't dance because of a recent thigh injury. He said it was a bullet injury but it was not clear if he was joking.

He also joked about Malaysian Muslim men marrying more than one woman, which he said could be a good thing, and noted that he would get into trouble with women's activists back home.

Bollywood movies are the most widely watched in the world with 3.6 billion tickets sold in India alone. They are also screened on televisions around Asia and the Middle East.