Renowned filmmaker Adoor Gopalkrishnan has added one more to his long list of honours with the Dadasaheb Phalke award, one of the most prestigious in Indian cinema.

The award would be conferred upon Adoor Gopalakrishnan in a ceremony early next year, officials said Monday. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is annually bestowed by the Indian government for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema.

Kerala-born Adoor is one of the most decorated Indian filmmakers in world cinema after Satyajit Ray, and his impressive debut in 1972 with "Swayamvaram" marked a beginning of a rich repertoire.

"Swayamvaram" created a record of sorts with the debutant director reaping national awards for best film, best director, best cinematographer and best actress.

Adoor's films were among the pioneering efforts in new age cinema, his work defining so-called "parallel" cinema that competed with commercial films in the 1970s through 1990s.

Born in 1941. Adoor graduated in political science and economics before straying into movie making. He joined the Pune-based Film and Television Institute of India in 1962 and learnt script writing and direction.

He scripted and directed nine feature films and more than two dozen short films and documentaries.

Adoor has won the national award for best director four times and best script writer thrice.

He was much decorated even in his foreign outings, when his films were screened in film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Rotterdam and Toronto.

Adoor's third film "Elippathayam" won him the British Film Institute Award for most original and imaginative film of 1982. He bagged the international film critics prize five times successively for "Mukhamukham", "Anantaram", "Mathilukal", "Vidheyan" and "Kathapurushan".

The filmmaker also won the national award for his collection of essays, "The World of Cinema", in 1984.