Biography
Nihalani was born on 19 August 1940 in Karachi, Sindh province (now in Pakistan) and his family migrated to India during the partition of 1947. He started out as a cinematographer, graduating in cinematography from the Shree Jaya Chamrajendra polytechnic in Bangalore in 1962. He was an Assistant Cinematographer to the legendary V. K. Murthy.He was associated with all the earlier films of Shyam Benegal and with the cinematography of Richard Attenborough's Oscar-winning epic Gandhi. Nihalani and Benegal are well known for their socially relevant films.
His first directorial venture was Aakrosh starring Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, the late Smita Patil and the late Amrish Puri. This was based on a real story which was converted into a film script by the eminent Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar and it made a huge impact on audiences all over India. It shared the Golden Peacock for best film at the International Film Festival of India held in New Delhi in 1981. His film Ardh Satya, based on a story by S.D. Panwalkar, is still remembered by film lovers. It changed forever the way in which Indian cinema portrayed the police and it exposed in stark detail the police-politician-criminal nexus. Come 1997, and he adapted Bengali novelist, Mahasweta Devi's acclaimed novel by the same name to Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa
Over the years he has directed many films which are known for the manner in which they grab the viewer's attention, and his most recent work is the 2004 film Dev.
Read more about this topic: Govind Nihalani
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)