Following are the best Indian Directors:
- Satyajit Ray
India’s pre-eminent film-maker and one of the Masters of world cinema, Satyajit Ray, was known for his humanistic approach to cinema. Ray faced immense problems before he started making his first film. There was a lack of capital as, at that time, there were no financiers. However, he made the film by selling his rare music albums, his wife’s jewellery at Sectra in 1955. Ray made his first feature film, ‘pather panchali’, which created history in Indian cinema and established him as a director of international repute. Pather Panchali won him the “ Best Human Document invited” prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956. Ray’s film won the President’s gold medal in India, and it was successful at the box office.
- Girish Karnad
He is a famous contemporary writer, playwright, screenwriter, actor and movie director in the Kannada language and made his acting and screenwriting debut in a Kannada movie, Samskara (1970). It was based on a novel by U.R. Ananthamurthy and directed by Pattabhirama Reddy. He has worked in many Hindi and Kannada feature films and worked with directors like Mrinal Sen, Satyajit Ray and Shyam Benegal. Girish made his directorial debut with Vamsa Vriksha in 1971, which won him a national award for the best director.
•Mani Kaul
Mani Kaul‘s first feature film Uski Roti ( A Day’s Bread, 1969), was one of the pivotal films of the ‘New Indian Cinema’ And created shock waves when released because of its complete departure from all earlier Indian Film in terms of form and narrative. It was followed by ‘Ashad Ka Ek din’ (A monsoon day).
With ‘Duvidha’, Mani Kaul uses colour with considerable mastery for the first time and produces a very polished work based on a well-known and acquisitive tale from his native Rajasthan. It earned him the national award for Best director.
- Aparna Sen
Aparna Sen is one of the leading actresses of Bengali cinema. She was born in Calcutta in 1945 as the daughter of an eminent film critic Chidananda Das Gupta. She was an actress in Utpal Dutt‘s Little theatre group. During her school days, she used to accompany her father to the screenings of the Calcutta film society. Viewing Bergman, Rossellini, Desica, Truffaut, felony, Ray and many such masters of world cinema, Aparna got the proper perspective of good cinema.
She made her film debut in the Samapti, an episode of Satyajit Ray‘s Teen Kanya. Since then, she has acted in numerous films, her more challenging roles being Mrinal Sen’s Akash Kusum, Tapan Sinha‘s Ekhonee, Satyajit Ray‘s Jana Aranya, Piku Bombay talkies and others.
•Gurvinder Singh
Gurvinder Singh is an Indian film director of Punjabi cinema. He is an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, where he studied and graduated in 2001. After graduation, he made a few short films and directed music videos for Rabbi Shergill and Jasbir Jassi. Gurvinder’s first short film Bala was a documentary based on one of the Punjabi folk singers and was sponsored by India Foundation for The Arts (IFA).
His first feature film in Punjabi, ‘Anhe Ghore Da Daan’ ( Alms for a blind horse), won him the National awards for Best Direction, Best cinematography and the Best feature film in Punjabi. The award was presented for its haunting portrayal of people’s lives in a village as they battled with the reality of large-scale industrial development. The director deployed inventive storytelling from where sound, space and body operate precisely to make the experience of a fragile existence. Each scene of the film carries the signs of persistent trauma, which confidently and successfully reinvented the contours of the Indian experimental cinema.
