Posts Tagged ‘Adoor Gopalakrishnan’

10 Questions with Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Posted: October 3, 2013 by moifightclub in 10 Questions, cinema, film, Interview, News
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I-am-not-a-rebel1Adoor Gopalakrishnan is considered to be one of the greatest filmmakers of India. In a career comprising four decades, the Padma Vibhushan (the second highest civilian honour) awardee has scripted and directed eleven feature films and several shots and documentaries. Considered the pioneer of the New Cinema movement in Kerala, Gopalakrishnan’s films have fetched him over eighteen National Awards. In 2004, he was awarded the title, ‘Commander of the Order of Arts & Letters’ – the top French honor for culture. Winner of the highest honour of the nation, the Dada Phalke Award, the septuagenarian spoke to National Award winning editor, Apurva Asrani, about his films, his views on popular cinema, and his vision for an intelligent, and committed distribution system.

1. Why are your films not widely available in India?

Firstly, there is the hurdle of language. I make films in Malayalam and this limits the audience for my films to Kerala. I am aware that there exists a niche audience outside my state but there has been little effort to take these films accessible to the audiences outside the state. My films can very well be exhibited with sub-titles in English. We have so many big cities in India and they can substantially support a movement for meaningful cinema in this country. The Governmental agencies like NFDC have done precious little to explore these possibilities.

Strangely even private initiatives are wanting. We lack an intelligent and enlightened distribution system that does not hesitate to explore new avenues for a different kind of cinema.

2. Do you think there is an audience for world cinema in India?

There certainly is. You can gauge the interest from the success of the several film festivals spread all over India now. Especially with the advent of the multiplex, it is possible to programme decent films and generate reasonable revenue. But distributors should have faith in these films and be ready to venture into unexplored areas.

3. How true are you to your script? Is there room for improvisation during the shoot?

I always work with a detailed script. And then I prepare a shooting script before I go for a shoot. All the same, no script is sacrosanct when you actually film on locale.

Scripting is perhaps the most important stage in filmmaking. But it should not be treated as final and inviolable. A script is written inside a room, but on location where you have nature and real people interacting, there is every chance for change. Even the position of the sun in the day becomes a very critical factor.

4. What is editing according to you? Do your films evolve in the editing room?

Editing starts even as you are writing your script. It accords the film its rhythm and flow. It is again not necessary that editing follows the script strictly. In fact I do not refer to the script while editing. Though a lot of thought and planning may have gone into scripting, the editor/director should not hesitate to improve upon the material that is available to him. There are many instances of my having altered even the sequence of scenes. The impact is what maters.  

5. If we talk of Indian cinema gone global, only two prolific names come to mind immediately; Satyajit Ray and your self. Why is it so?

It may be because we have not compromised with market pressures. These films deal with real people, their problems and their aspirations. Nothing is faked for dramatic or spectacular effect. As these films portray life lived in our land they become authentic documents of Indian life.

6. Would you make a film in Hindi like Ray did?

(Laughs) I don’t see the need. Also, my understanding of the Hindi language is very rudimentary. And don’t forget, language is the flower of a culture. It is not just a mere vehicle to transact ideas. It should not be forgotten that Ray made only one attempt at making a film in Hindi (Shatranj ke Khiladi -1977).

7. In Nizhalkkuthu (2002) you have followed a rhythm different from your other films. It is fast paced, stylistically shot and features a mainstream music composer(Ilayaraja). Was that a successful experiment?

Each time I make a film, my attempt is to try things I have not done before. So, every time I pose before myself a new challenge and then try to meet it. The process is very exciting. Some films are slow while others are faster. The pace of a film is invariably dependent on its theme and treatment.

As for the score, I wanted to use folk music as a lait motif. Ilayaraja happens to be a master at that and it worked very well. I was very happy with the result.

8. In Kodiyettam (1977), the lead character, Shankaran kutty slowly sheds his childlike conduct after his marriage. In Swayamvaram (1972) marriage is seen as a rude wake up call from a love story. Do you see marriage as a failed institution?

No. In fact, I see it the other way. Marriage is the meeting of two minds. Sankarankutty who is not prepared for a married life and the responsibilities that come with it, slowly grows into it. His real marriage takes place at the very end when he buys clothes and presents it to his wife. Man presenting clothes to the woman is the core ritual of a Hindu marriage in Kerala. Swayaramvaram is the story of a young man and a woman choosing to live together without the formal bonding of a marriage. It is devoid of the supportive network of their parents. It is the society that they come into that proves to be unwilling to accommodate them.

9. Your stand against popular cinema. What factors you think would allow parallel cinema to survive in India?

I am not against cinema becoming popular. We all want our films to be popular. In their effort to make their films acceptable to the masses, people make all kinds of compromises and the end product turns out to be simply run of the mill. Let me also hasten to add that I do not make parallel cinema. Parallel cinema is a misnomer. I simply make films. It is others who call them by convenient names and I think it is unfair to do so. My films are processed in the same laboratories as the commercial ones and often I use commercially successful stars in them. And I exhibit them in the same cinemas as the others. There is nothing in the making, promotion or exhibition of these films which qualifies them to be termed parallel.

10. How would you compare our approach to film distribution vis-a-vis the west?

Quality films deserve to be treated differently. We can borrow examples from the West. Both in Europe and the US, if a film wins a good prize in an International festival, it becomes the selling point. Our own experience is just the opposite. A film winning a national award is looked down up on with suspicion. Our distributors discreetly avoid it because they presume that popularity or commercial success is inversely proportional to the quality of a film.

VOTD : Ask a Filmmaker – Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Posted: July 24, 2013 by moifightclub in cinema, VOTD
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Thanks to BFI for making this possible because we hardly get to see and hear Adoor Gopalakrishnan.

Info from BFI account – Only two filmmakers from India have won the BFI’s Sutherland Trophy for most original and imaginative film — Satyajit Ray and Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Adoor has won the International Film Critics Prize six times, and in 2002 the Smithsonian Institution honoured him with a complete retrospective of his work.

Adoor pioneered the film society movement in Kerala and formed India’s first film co-operative for production, distribution and exhibition. Here he answers questions from Twitter, Facebook and email, as part of our Ask an Expert series.

Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films Poll – what Indian filmmakers voted for

Posted: August 27, 2012 by moifightclub in cinema, film, News
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Every decade Sight and Sound magazine does this poll to find out the Greatest films of all time. Filmmakers, critics, festival programmers, academics, distributors, writers and other cinephiles are asked to vote for the poll. We are not sure about the criteria on the basis of which the people are asked to vote, but this year five Indian filmmakers are there in the voting list – Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Amit Dutta, Anurag Kashyap, Ashim Ahluwalia and Vidhu Vinod Chopra. And a strange thing caught our eyes – Raqs Media Collective has voted in Director’s category! Can anyone explain that?

Here’s the list of top 10 films that Indian directors voted for…

1. Adoor Gopalkrishnan

400 Blows, The – 1959 –  François Truffaut

Andrei Rublev – 1966 – Andrei Tarkovsky

Boy, The – 1969 – Oshima Nagisa

Pather Panchali – 1955 – Satyajit Ray

Pickpocket – 1959 – Robert Bresson

Puppetmaster, The – 1993 – Hsiao-hsien Hou

Rashomon – 1950 – Akira Kurosawa

Round-Up, The – 1966 – Miklos Jancso

strada, La – 1954 – Federico Fellini

Tokyo Story – 1953 – Ozu Yasujirô

2. Amit Dutta

Andrei Rublev – 1966 – Andrei Tarkovsky

Distant Thunder – 1973 – Satyajit Ray

Lancelot Du Lac – 1974 – Robert Bresson

Late Spring – 1949 – Ozu Yasujirô

My Ain Folk – 1973 – Bill Douglas

My American Uncle – 1980 – Alain Resnais

Arguments and a Story or Reason, Debate and a Tale – 1974 – Ritwik Ghatak

Rikyu – 1989 – Teshigahara Hiroshi

Saint Dnyaneshwar –     XXX – Vishnupant Govind Damle/Sheikh Fattelal

Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors – 1964 – Sergei Parajanov

3. Anurag Kashyap

Apocalypse Now – 1979 – Francis Ford Coppola

Bicycle Thieves, The – 1948 – Vittorio de Sica

Breathless – 1960 – Jean-Luc Godard

Fanny and Alexander – 1984 – Ingmar Bergman

Godfather: Part II, The – 1974 – Francis Ford Coppola

Head-On – 2003 – Fatih Akin

Peeping Tom – 1960 – Michael Powell

Pyaasa – 1957 – Guru Dutt

Taxi Driver – 1976 – Martin Scorsese

Trainspotting – 1995 – Danny Boyle

4. Ashim Ahluwalia

Adversary, The – 1971 – Satyajit Ray

Bogey-Man, The – 1980 – Govindan Aravindan

Close-Up – 1989 – Abbas Kiarostami

End of Summer, The – 1961 – Ozu Yasujirô

Golden Thread, The – 1965 – Ritwik Ghatak

Mirror – 1974 – Andrei Tarkovsky

Nanami: Inferno of First Love – 1968 – Hani Susumi

Pale Flower – 1964 – Shinoda Mashiro

Unsere Afrikareise – 1961 – Peter Kubelka

Veronika Voss – 1982 – Rainer Werner Fassbinder

5. Vidhu Vinod Chopra

8½ – 1963 – Federico Fellini

Breathless – 1960 – Jean-Luc Godard

Citizen Kane – 1941 – Orson Welles

Cloud-Capped Star, The – 1960 – Ritwik Ghatak

Emperor of the Mughals, The – 1960 – K. Asif

Lawrence of Arabia – 1962 – David Lean

Mother India – 1957 – Mehboob Khan

Pather Panchali – 1955 – Satyajit Ray

Pyaasa – 1957 – Guru Dutt

Rashomon – 1950 – Akira Kurosawa

– You can click on the filmmakers names to go their voting page and know more about the films.

– To know about the films that other Indian voters voted for, click here. You can go to the individual pages and scroll down to read their notes as well.

– To know more about the poll in details, click here and here.

FWA Screenwriting Seminar (Day 1) – The good, the bad & the ugly

Posted: September 1, 2010 by moifightclub in bollywood, cinema, News, Special, writing
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Mr Screeny is back. For those of you, who don’t know him, click here to read his first post. This time he attended the weekend seminar at NFAI Pune and here is all the details from the Day 1. The good, the bad, the ugly and the goss.

The day began with a BIG queue at the NFAI – and with a mammoth crowd of students, film industry people, media professionals, writers directors, and aspirants. Felt a little bored of the over scholarly talk & lectures and didn’t take any notes whenever I felt there was too much to write/too irrelevant/too soporific; but ‘on the whole’ the first day was okay dokay. Had taken down few notes whatever I found interesting, and am paraphrasing it all below

Imtiaz Hussien – FWA committee member (& dialogue writer of Parinda)

The term ‘Melodrama’ originated in the 1780s and means two diametrically opposite things in German & French.

In German it means – a passage of opera with music

In French it means – a passage in which characters say nothing but the music conveys/says everything.

Kedarnath Outy – the chief of NFAI (spoke about preservation of films)

Since the inception of Indian cinema, there have been 43000 Indian films released.

The NFAI has only 5000 odd films!

I passionately request you all to if and when you come across original film material (footage, print, rolls etc) please contact us. The corporate do not bother to give us the prints because they are lying with the film labs. When we request the labs, they say they’ve written umpteen times to the corporate/production houses informing them of their film footage lying around; but the corporate regard it as a recording & archiving formality and do not bother replying back. In such cases, the onus often should be taken by the film buffs and volunteers like us to help preserve film culture.

Anjum Rajabali

The purpose of this seminar is educational so that it leads to a better understanding of cinema. Until 2004 there was no screenwriting courses in India. And then FTII introduced screenplay writing course. Since then we’ve tried to hold as many interactions between film writers/aspirants & the professionals.

We were also trying to get Salim-Javed together for this conference (after a gap of 31 yrs., they would be sharing a platform together). Both had readily agreed to the idea. Javed saab had even said “It would be a privilege to hear him speak on screenplay”. However unfortunately, Salim Khan couldn’t come due to ill health.

Session 1. How it all Began: Genesis of  and Influences on the Early Indian Script

Adoor Gopalakrishnan

When I joined FTII in 1962, there was no separate course in screenwriting. The course was Screenplay writing cum Film Direction. Most people who joined hated screenplay writing then. Today when I see this big an audience for a screenwriting seminar, I feel a lot has changed since then. May be part of this change is thanks to the Bombay Film Industry.

In Malayalam films, script wasn’t the starting point of the film. Many a times it was written on the sets ‘fresh’& ‘hot’ (Taaza taaza). One or two films written this way became successful, and it therefore became a trend to write the script on the sets only! The writer would be sometimes standing in a pose under a tree, busy writing the next scene which was to be shot. Whenever we saw someone standing in a pose on any film set, we knew immediately that he was the writer!

In 1985 a screenplay of one of my films got published, but nobody read it. Nowadays, the sale of film scripts has increased, not for learning how to write for films, but to write for TV. My scripts will be a bad choice if one wants to read them and learn how to write for TV.

When my films get screened abroad, foreign film fraternity often comes unto me and asks “In India, do they make films like you do ? Don’t they only make ‘song & dance’ films ?” For them the only exposure to Indian Cinema is ‘Bollywood’. It takes time for me to explain that I’m as much an outsider in ‘Bollywood’ as they are!

We are heir to a great tradition of Art but have we really imbibed from it ? Very little is taken from our culture except song & dance and melodrama.

Bombay makes high budget rich looking commercial masala films and all other regional cinema makes poor imitations of the same. The commercial cinema is either derived from Hollywood and/or the tradition of Parsi theater.

Coming back to the FTII course then, the 1st 2 yrs. was about writing & basic elements of direction and in the 3rd year we were taught advanced direction.

Many directors have no sense in drama, because they have no interest in writing.

A director has to bring his vision to the script and understand the written form – how to convert it dramatically on screen. Otherwise, the writer will write the script, cameraman will shoot it and editor will edit it – and the film can be made. A director is NOT an organizer of talents – there are production managers for that.

My colleagues wanted to be in Bombay Film Industry; not to be against the ‘system’, but to be absorbed by it.

“You have to READ to WRITE”

Screenplay is the very basic material on which the film is built on. It’s your idea of the film. You can hardly explain the film on a screenplay. It eventually finds its completion in the film that is made out of it.

The other panelists/speakers weren’t too interesting. A word of request to the super arrogant Shama Zaidi…..

….We respect you for your costume work in Shatranj ke Khiladi (Satyajit Ray, Premchand – two greats), your writing in Bharat ek Khoj, Garam Hawa, Mandi and many many such superb films (and your work as an Art director too in many such films). We also know that as a panelist you do get asked some slightly peripheral questions at times. But you could do your HUGE IMDB LIST a great service by replying in a non dismissive, polite, humorous manner. I mean cummon – your paper talks about the roots of Hindi-Urdu cinema and starts from 1853 – Wajid Ali Shah’s court (an interesting though self-important self reference to Shatranj ke Khiladi – one might argue) and if a naïve screenwriter asks you about a question related to the 1920s films, you turn around and needlessly retort “I don’t know about 1920s. I wasn’t born then!”; “I think this question is completely irrelevant” in a tone which would outrival Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s famous two words “Shut up!!!”

And Kaushik Bhaumick – the other panelist. I don’t have any remarks for him, because I slept through his whole lecture.

Atul Tiwari – the audience woke up when he started talking, thanks to his witty one liners, intelligent puns and wonderful Javed Akhtar-ish sense of humor.

During the break, I met Adoor since I have myself been trying to lay my hands on his films for quite some time but to no avail. I asked him where can I see his films subtitled ? No DVD shops in Mumbai/Chennai/Delhi have it. And I doubt if any subtitled copies are available in Kerala. He said the only way to get to see 2-3 (of the whole lot) was through Amazon !!!

I told him it was ridiculous to pay the extra shipping cost when the films ideally could/should be available in Kerala/Trivandrum/Cochin/Munnar any-friggin city down south.

“No. there is no other way” – he said with a rather I-know-it-sucks-I-can’t-help-it expression

Session 2  Dramatic Highs: Melodrama and our Cinematic Form

Clips were shown from various Indian films – Meghe dhaka Tara, Subarnarekha, Kannathil Muthamital, Mughal-e-azam, Shejari, Pyaasa and others and ‘melodrama’ was discussed using terms like “hyperbolic cinematization”, “orchestration & amplification of emotion”, “dizzying camerawork”, “stylized & exaggerated movements” etc.

The other two panelists (not mentioned below) used scholarly english words in their papers which were grandiloquently pontificating with hyperbolic propensity towards 14-alphabets-long-words which might be good to read (if it were a TOI editorial) but listening to them was a unwieldy task thanks to the soporific hallucinogenic monotonous style of speech.

Kamlesh Pandey

When I started screenwriting, I had predicted that the 1st star of the film will be the screenwriter, and ‘they’ used to laugh at me. Today I look at the interest in screenwriting, and I feel very happy.

What is Melodrama ?

My Marathi theater friends would joke that Melodrama is ‘Melo’ Drama (‘Melo’ in Marathi means Dead). i.e. dead drama

I remember an ‘intellectual’ journalist once asked a question to RD Burman –

Q) When the hero and heroine are sitting in a boat in a lake singing a song , it is a considerable co-incidence that they might be ‘good singers’, but where the hell does the orchestra come from ? Orchestra kahaan se aata hai ?

A) Arrey Idiot – jahaan se camera aata hai!!!

Films are for life, and not about framing life. If I want to see life why would I spend 200 bucks to go to theater to see it when I can easily go down to the streets and see ‘life’ for free!

All film language is derivative of everything including real life. The heart of melodrama is big enough to accommodate anti melodrama & realism. Ardhasatya & Zanjeer have the same appeal for me.

Tezaab is Awara set in the 90s. The introduction sequence of Anil Kapoor in Tezaab is the same as the introduction sequence of KN Singh in Awara. It shows how much cinema has travelled in a span of 30-40 yrs., the hero has become the villain.

Dil – I asked the director Inder kumar “If Saeed Jaffrey (rich father of madhuri) is so rich then will he not hire a detective to investigate if Anupam Kher (the poor father of Aamir) is indeed a big industrialist or a raddi-wala ?”

He replied “You are the only one who is asking this question. Trust me, no one else in the theaters will ask the same”

People don’t go to theaters to ask questions. Entertain them, but don’t let them down.

We don’t have a 3rd ACT (the resolution) in life but we need one in films. Life doesn’t make sense. Films however, give us the vicarious pleasure and the hope to live. They help us make sense in life. When we see heartbreak in films, it prepares us to deal with our heartbreaks in real life. Life is what we are. Movies are what we want to be.

Cinema/Theater is a gym for emotional fitness. In spite of having 60 TV channels we still go to theaters.

K Hariharan (Tamil film director)

During the time when there was a tremendous anti North India and anti Hindi sentiment in tamil Nadu, the Dravidian movement found its voice in the ‘new wave’ of tamil cinema. Directors like Bharathiraja, Mahendran, Balu mahendru, K Balachander etc went and made non commercial films and ‘village films’ which were similar in spirit to the ‘parallel’ cinema of Shyam benegal, Govind nihlani, MS Sathyu etc. They existed along with the commercial tamil films until the ‘phenomena’ of manirathnam invaded the tamil cinema screen, and everything ended up looking more aesthetic & ÁD film’ like rather than the raw & visceral.  (wrt the kanathil muthamital title track with simran & the kid) Don’t you think this is an AD film ? I mean you could safely release this song segment titled as ‘Vimal Saris’!!!

We have explored the ‘Sringar Ras’ a lot in our films – art for pleasure’s sake – the entire bandwidth of guy meets girl, love, different shades of it – eventually to a pleasant culmination etc etc. However the current ‘new wave’ in Tamil Cinema (directors like Bala, Ameer, Sasikumar, Cheran, Mysskin) are making films on the less travelled path of ‘Bibathsa Ras’ or the emotion of disgust. The raw violence, the energy, the ambition to not shy away from uncomfortable zone all are the characteristics of this new school of filmmaking and the best part is – these films are successful! 

Chitra Palekar

We make films with ‘heightened drama’. I remember when our first film (directed by Amol Palekar) was screened at a film festival, a foreign film critic argued with us about why we had songs & dance ‘melodrama’ in our film. I replied that in our traditions, we have songs for all occasions, every festival and even every time of the day. It is our culture. “Apun toh aise hi hain!!!”

Session 3 : A Song and Dance About Everything: Music, Song, and Lyrics in the Script

Vinay Shukla (talked about music in 50s-60s-70s)

Songs were a part of the narrative and not an ‘item’. A very good example would be ‘Jab Pyaar Kiya toh darna kya’ from Mughal-e-azam in which an otherwise introverted & shy Anarkali proclaimed her love for Salim in front of the whole world. And we believe it and how! That is the strength of a song

Songs & Melodrama are two distinct features of the Indian script. We are a country of songs. The first film Alam Ara had 7 songs.

The ‘sufi fakir’ singing a song “De de khuda ke naam pe” was another common feature in many film songs even till the 70s-80s eg: Pran singing ‘Kasme Vaade Pyaar Wafa sab’ from Upkaar; where a normal personal drama/situation spreads to a universal appeal thanks to the song & lyrics. Songs universalize a specific dramatic situation.

We also had a ‘theme song’ eg: Kaagaz ke Phool ‘Dekhi Zamaane Ki Yaari’ which was used throughout the film to punctuate the protagonist Suresh Sinha’s journey.

A song can condense or expand time and hence is a very important tool to be used for cinematic advantage. It can act as the ‘bridge’ between the credible & the incredible for the audience to walk through it, willingly suspending disbelief.

Javed Akhtar was to be the chairperson of this session but he couldn’t come due to some reasons. As a result Swanand was asked to be the chairperson for the same. Atul Tiwari remarked “Ek din maine aapse kahaa tha ki aap Javed Saab ki jagah lenge”

Btw – Saaed Mirza & Kundan shah were walking through the aisles when it was announced on stage that Javed Akhtar wouldn’t be coming, and the audience heaved a big sigh of disappointment – “Oh Noo”.

The two filmmakers half muttered under their breath “That is so sad” – “It breaks my heart” – “Oh dear dear dear…”

It was interesting to observe such a private sarcastic disapproval of Javed Akhtar by the two. Clearly they do not think too high of the the man for whatever reasons, some which they spoke about on Day-2 when they came on the panel.

Swanand Kirkire

These days a dangerous trend has started thanks to Ibn-e-batoota. The producers want some similar sounding nonsensical lyrics from everyone.

“Sir ek word de do ibn-e-batoota jaisa. Gaana HIT ho jayega”

When I’m writing my own screenplay, I myself find it strange to put in songs.

The day ended with a rendition of ‘Bawra Mann’ by Swanand (it was almost mandatory wasn’t it ?), much to our delight.

Post on Day 2 coming soon. And it was much better than Day 1.

National Film Awards list is out!

Posted: September 7, 2009 by moifightclub in bollywood, cinema, News, Regional, Simbly South
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The National Film Awards list is finally out. Earlier we confirmed few winners including Prakash Raj For Best Actor on this post. And like always, we were right. Check out the other winners.

Best Actor – Prakash Raj( Kanchivaram )

Best Actress – Uma Shree ( Gulabi Talkies )

Best Film – Kanchivaram

Best Director – Adoor Gopalakrishnan ( Naalu Pennungal – Four Women )

Best Child Actor – Sharad Goyekar ( Marathi film Tingya ) 

Best Supporting Actor – Darshan Zariwalla ( Gandhi My Father )

Best Supporting Actress – Shefali Shah (The Last Lear)

Best Lyrics – Prasoon Joshi ( Taare Zameen Par)

Best Playback Singer(Male) – Shankar Mahadevan ( Taare Zameen Par )

Best Playback Singer (Female) – Shreya Ghoshal

Best Film on National Integration – Dharam

Best Film On Family Welfare – Taare Zameen Par

Best Film For Overall Entertaintment – Chak De India

Best Screenplay – Feroze Abbas Khan ( Gandhi My Father)

Best Music – Ousepacham for Ore Kadal

Best Film (Hindi) – 1971

Best Film (English ) – The Last Lear

Best Special Effects – Sivaji

Best Art Direction – Om Shanti Om

Best Choreography – Ye Ishq Hai (Jab We Met)

Best Cinematography – Frozen ( Shanker Raman)

Best Audiography – 1971

Best Editing – Naalu Pennungal ( Malyalam)

Best Film on Social Issues – Antardwanda ( Dir – Sushil Rajpal )

Special Jury Award – Gandhi My Father

Indira Gandhi Award for Best First Film – Shivajee Chandrabhushan for Frozen

Best Book on Cinema – From Raj To Swaraj : The Non Fiction Film In India by B D Garga

Best Film Critic – V K Joseph ( Malyalam )

In the non-feature/short films category, mentioning only those few which am aware of (read friends or friends’ friend) –

Best Educational/Motivational/Instructional Film – Prarambha (Santosh Sivan)

Short Fiction Film – Udhed Bun ( Siddharth Singh)

Best Cinematography – Kramasha ( Savita Singh )

Best Audiography –  Kramasha ( Ajit Singh Rathore )

Best Music Direction – Echoes of Silence ( English/ Khasi – Zubin Garg)

For the full list of entries and winners click here.

The jury was headed by Sai Paranjpe and members included Ashok Viswanathan and Namita Gokhale. About 102 films and 106 non-feature films were considered.