Nfdc India

In a world that saw her through a different lens, she kept shining with a light that could not be unseen. Her smile awakens hope, her heart builds courage, and her journey inspires us all. And now, she is here to meet you all. She is Tanvi: The Great.

The film is about a Kathakali dancer, Kunhiraman and his relationship with his Guru, Asan. Gradually over the years, as Kunhiraman becomes popular, he becomes arrogant and starts arguing with his Guru.

Gouri, a documentary filmmaker takes a journey along with her friend. She is trying to collect material for her documentary project on instrumental music. They go to a village with the help of a schoolteacher. They travel to meet an instrumental musician, who has gone some place elsewhere to give a performance. Both are forced to stay in the village till the musician returns. Film tries to capture the human attitude when they are placed in a condition/situation/environment which is familiar and at the same time unfamiliar. As the seemingly simple yet complex situations develop, how these characters fits in to a landscape and climate as much mental as physical. Some time "vision" isn't what is visible, sound isn't exactly what is heard. —Wikipedia

Eight outsiders are trying to create a theater play while breaking every rule of theater craft. The film Cowboys is a comedy based on a Croatian hit theater play. It is a story of eight outsiders who are trying to create a theater play while breaking every rule of theater craft. Genre-wise Cowboys are between social drama and comedy with emphasis on clear stories and functionally profiled characters. The story takes place in a little industrial town, small and claustrophobic enough to make life in it impossible, and yet big and diverse enough to make the story and the characters convincing. SOMETIME LIFE CAN BE BORING, BUT WESTERN NEVER!

In jungles around the world, many children suffer or loose their lives because of war, disease and hunger. But an unknown truth that has been hidden from the modern world also affects the lives of children. Silent is inspired by true events that happen in the highlands of Southeast Asia. The story portraits the life of a little Makcun tribe girl name Lian, who lives in a remote village of Northeast Laos, where life hasn't been influenced much by the modern world. Her father, a modern man came to the village and fell in love with her mother. He taught her many things about the ways of life outside of the village, promising he would one day show her the wonders beyond the village. Unfortunately, he couldn't keep that promise. He passes away when her mother was five months pregnant. Just when the pain of losing her father had started to subside, her mother also passes away while giving birth to her baby brother. Now, not only does she have to deal with the loss of her parents, she must also find a way to survive the cruel fate that awaits them. She takes her three year-old baby sister and her newborn brother on a journey for survival across the jungle to escape from the villagers; where she thinks it might be a safer place for them to live. But crossing the jungle isn't without its dangers as they struggle to survive and find safety, while dealing with the emotional pain and hardships. —Joseph Tsai

Diwakaran meets DuPont who holds bioscope shows. He gets fascinated by the machine and buys it from DuPont in order to hold bioscope shows in his village. But later he gets superstitious about it. The film Bioscope is set in the second decade of the 20th century. The film unfolds in the backdrop of cinema making its appearance in Kerala. The protagonist Diwakaran's new journey begins with his acquisition of a bioscope from the Frenchman DuPont, who organises bioscope shows on the coasts of Tamil Nadu. He returns home and starts conducting bioscope shows in his village. The villagers welcome the new images with innocence. Yet, some suspect that the bioscope box has ghosts of the British hidden in it. Diwakaran's wife, Nalini, is ill. His father is deeply concerned and believes that modern medicines are incapable of curing Nalini and looks for medicines and cure in astrology and witchcraft. Diwakaran is greeted by all of these forces when he arrives home with his brand new images - by the innocence of the villagers and obstinacy of tradition. A witch doctor, who arrives with a mute girl that can tell what is past and predict the future, sounds the death knell for the bioscope... The exorcism of tradition over the pulse of modernity.

A middle-aged couple want their daughter to follow in their footsteps and become a dancer.

Five By Four is the story of five women. All smart, intelligent and very aware.The film is laid out like a novel; it has a prologue, main story and epilogue. The main story is broken into four small stories. While each story concentrates on individual characters, it also follows the lives of the girls.

Maguni is a bullock cart driver.. One day the news spread that people will no longer ride in Maguni's cart, because the Singh family plans to ply a motor bus into town.

Sunil is an NRI married to an American girl. His father lives in Kolkata with an old servant Shambhu. When Sunil returns home after fifteen years he sees the house is locked and his father has disappeared. Guilt-ridden Sunil starts looking for him. He comes to know that his father might be in an old age home. He reaches there only to find that he had died a few months earlier. Sunil meets Satya Babu, his father's fellow inmate, who tells him all about his father's last days. Sunil tells the old man that he wants to adopt him as his father and requests him to come to US with him. —C S Abhishek Shahi A son hoping to renew his relationship with his father discovers it may be too late in this drama. Sunil (Rajit Kapoor) was born in India, but after completing his education, he moved to the United States as part of his job with a large multinational corporation. Sunil made a token effort to keep in touch with his father while living in America, but when he stops getting answers to his periodic letters, he decides to pay his dad a visit, thinking he'll bring him back to America with him if the old man is having trouble taking care of himself. But when he arrives in Calcutta for the first time in a decade and a half, the city looks strange and unfamiliar to him, and he learns that his father moved away from his home a few years earlier. Sunil finds himself travelling from one city to another, following an increasingly fuzzy trail as he tries to find out what's become of his father, and realizing -- to his horror -- just how neglectful he's been.

Three college students, Akshay, Rajat and Sunny, believe India to be a backward country. Attracted by the culture of the West, they decide to leave for America. Three lovable, naive, fantasy-ridden college boys think that everything American is fabulous; everything Indian is backward and embarassing. Determined to get to America, they cook up one hair-brained scheme after another to get the all-important 'letter of sponsorship' from an America: ANY American. —T. Bandee

Kishan Shah is a self-respecting, wise old man who has divided his property amongst his family and now lives with his youngest son, Ram Sharan. However he is not able to get along with him and his family for too long.

Ranjit is an educated and unemployed young man, desperately looking for a job. He is taught to use a gun by people who promise to show him a new way of life and lead him to a better future.

Atin and Ela are revolutionaries who are deeply in love with each other but their union is not accepted by the group's leader Indranath. To separate them, Indranath sends Ela off to a distant camp. Based on Rabindranath Tagore's last novel, Char Adhyay is set in the Bengali Renaissance of the 1930s and 1940s. A group of young intellectuals gets embroiled in the struggle for Indian independence, sometimes at the expense of their personal lives. The film, in which many of the cast members are not professional actors, raises questions about nationalism.

A classical Indian singer (Kitu Gidwani) loses her voice but regains it after copying a child's intonation. The mother of the Indian female singer Pallavi (Kitu Gidwani) is at the end of her life. She was master and teacher for her daughter for the art of Indian singing. But she will not be able to complete her lessons. So Pallavi experiences the lack of the guru of her mother. Finally she finds him in a very young street-girl who is able to sing marvelously. But this girl keeps disappearing again and again... —Marco Radke <ds@serve.com>

Naseem (The Morning Breeze) 1995 | 120 mins | Hindi | Social Based around the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992, Naseem draws parallels between two generations and the conflicting situations that govern their contrasting worlds. Naseem is a young inquisitive school girl and shares a intensely loving bond with her grandfather, who belongs to an era replete with harmony between the Hindu & Muslims. With days leading up to the imminent demolition of the Babri Masjid, he watches helplessly as the world he had once known to exist is betrayed of its peace and is unfortunately a world in which his naïve & beloved granddaughter will ultimately belong to.

A self-made woman befriends a poor old couple who pretend to be her long-lost grandparents, although she does not accept their assertion of a biological relationship. The film shows how religion has become a contradiction to integration, far flung from its basic, simple truths of love and brotherhood among people. Religion thrives on tolerance for another religious group or non-tolerance which have both led to fanaticism today. It unfolds how these concepts result in separating more than in binding.

Amodini is a rich landowner's daughter. Unable to face social stigma, her father arranges her marriage to a much older person, who fails to turn up on the wedding day. To save the situation, she is forced to marry a 15-year-old boy.

Mammo moves to Pakistan during the Partition. Years later, with nowhere else to go, she visits Bombay to meet her sister and grandson but struggles to extend her visa. 13 year old Riyaz lives a poor lifestyle in Bombay, India, with his grandmother, Fayyuzi, and her sister, Mehmooda alias Mammo. Quite outspoken and embittered over his dad abandoning him, Riyaz does not have many friends, save for Rohan. When Mammo plans a surprise birthday party for him, Riyaz is offended as he believes his friends will make fun of him as his lifestyle is not as good as their's. Fayyuzi and Riyaz have an argument with Mammo, and she leaves for the Mosque at Haji Ali, but returns when both apologize to her. Although Mammo was born in Panipat during the British Raj, she was one of thousands of Muslims who left for Pakistan. She was married over there, could not conceive, was branded a "barren woman", and asked to leave. Having nowhere else to go, she came to live with her widowed sister in Bombay on a temporary Visa. Every month she would walk to the nearest Police Station and get an extension. She finally paid a Rs.4800/ as a bribe in order to get a permanent visa through Inspector Apte. When Apte was transferred, a new Police Inspector took over, processed her papers, held her to be an illegal immigrant, arrested her, had her escorted to the Bombay Central Railway Station, board the Frontier Mail, which would return her to Pakistan. Riyaz and Fayyuzi make every possible attempt to trace and bring her back, which was all in vain. Now 20 years later, Riyaz has grown up and has written a book about his Mammo, hoping that someday, somewhere she will find it and they will be reunited again. —rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)

A writer moves into the palatial house of a friend to find creative inspiration. A chance telephonic chat with a mysterious woman blossoms into love as he finally finds what he was looking for.

Aburao is a famous clown in Tamasha world, but will be soon addicted to the world of fame. Aburao a famous film star is performing final rites of his mother Manjula he is doing it by wearing wig so that continuity of his films is not affected.Aburao goes to his hometown after rituals where flashback reveals Manjula was a famous Tamasha dancer who left the troupe for Himmatrao Inamdar and Aburao is his illegitimate child.Manjula joins troupe of Nana after Himmatrao's death and Aburao gets fascinated by Nana's ability and starts to perform as Songadya (Clown) in the troupe and becomes a well known artist on request of his friend Gunwant starts his own troupe.He meets film star Menaka at a function who advises him to joins films Aburao willing to do only one film gets attracted to the glamour world leaving behind troupe and pregnant girlfriend Subhadra the world of glamour will deeply affect his life. —alex.mjacko@gmail.com

English Missionary, Miss Beatty (Jenny Seagrove), comes to Victorian India to rescue orphan children and convert them to Christianity.

A man tries to save the life of his son after five of his children are killed. A scholar adopts his son but a shameful incident challenges the scholar's authority in the society. Circa British Rule in India, a man vows to make his only surviving son, Narayan, alias Nani, a Brahmachari to atone for the deaths of five of his children. He takes this child to a remote village in Karnataka, South India, where he leaves his 11 year old son in the care of a learned Archarya, Udup Pandit. Here Nani gets to meet two other disciples of the Archarya, as well as his widowed daughter, Yamuna, and another male by the name of Shrikar Upadhyay, who also teaches the British how to read and write in Hindi. The Archarya goes away for a few days, and when he returns nothing is the same anymore. His daughter is pregnant, the villagers are all set to remove her from the village, they are also angry with him for refusing Yamuna to follow the traditional way a Hindu widow. The Archarya must also decide what is to be done with Yamuna as it is up to him now to decide her fate, not that he has many choices - for the prescribed Hindu punishment for this is - death. —rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)

Rajanna and Geeta arrive in the city with the hope of building a cozy little home. When they find their dream house, their happiness knows no bounds. Things are fine till, one day, a loud workshop opens up next door.

After years of painstaking research at the cost of his domestic pleasure, Dr. Dipankar Roy discovers a vaccine for leprosy. The news is flashed over television and overnight, an insignificant junior doctor receives international recognition. Professional jealousy and abuse of power threaten Dr. Roy, even as the Secretary of Health reprimands him for breaking the news to the press. He is asked to report to the Director of Health. Professional colleagues Dr. Arijit Sen and Dr. Ramananda invite him to a lecture but it is merely a pretence to humiliate him. Dr. Roy suffers a mild heart attack but he refuses to go to the hospital. His wife and few others like Dr. Kundu stand by Dr. Roy, but the harassment continues; a letter from an American foundation is suppressed and Dr. Roy transferred to a remote village. The last straw is two American doctors receiving credit for discovering the same vaccine. Dr. Roy is shattered. —Rajesh Das The movie is one of the finest work of veteran Tapan Sinha. It revolves around the life of Dr. Dipankar Roy who has engrossed himself in researching a cure of a dreaded diseases. During the course, he has already ruined his relationship with his wife due his ignorance. After years of hard work, when he finds a breakthrough in his research, his work is publicized but it attains negative reviews and skepticism from noted doctors, bureaucrats and his peers. It leads to immense dissatisfaction and is driven to a point of insanity due to the exasperating outlook of people around him. Will the work done by the doctor ever attain any recognition or will he be flushed in the vortex of democracy? These questions are answered by the movie with some exemplary performances by Pankaj Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Anil Chatterjee and budding Irrfan Khan. —Utkarsh Srivastava

A retired professor suddenly goes missing. Time passes by, life goes on, but his children and wife keep on looking back, trying to find their way through emotional torrents of the past and the present.

In this adaption of the Ibsen stage play, an idealistic physician discovers that the town's temple waters are dangerously contaminated. But with the community relying on the holy attraction for tourist dollars, his warnings go unheeded. Ashoke Gupta is an idealistic doctor working in a town near Calcutta. He discovers that the water at a popular temple is the source of an outbreak of typhoid and hepatitis. In order to save lives, he risks his career to try and call attention to this polluted water source, while a local group of building contractors attempt to discredit him in various ways.

Kamla Ki Maut is a 1989 Hindi drama film directed by Basu Chatterjee. The film set in Mumbai, deals with issue of love, pre-marital sex and relationships in modern India. Sudhakar Patel meets with young Anju and both fall in love with each other. Hoping to get married soon, both get intimate, resulting in a pregnancy. Both do not have the means to look after a child and decide to abort it. After the abortion Sudhakar disappears from Anju's life. Sudhakar relocates to another town, falls in love with Chameli, and promises to marry her when confronted by her irate father and townspeople, but subsequently disappears from her life also. Sudhakar then has an affair with Laxmi, who is the wife of his friend, Prakash, and gets a sound beating from Prakash when he finds him half-naked in his house. Shortly thereafter Sudhakar marries Nirmala, a young woman who wanted to marry her tutor. Years later, Sudhakar is still married to Nirmala, he now has two daughters, Geeta and Charu, who are of marriageable age and having affairs with Ajit and Deepak respectively. Their next door neighbor is Kamla Thakur who is to get married to Bhaskar soon, but kills herself by throwing herself from the 5th floor of her apartment building. This suicide shakes up the entire Patel family and each one must deal with their individual demons - a struggle that may change their lives forever. —rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)

Dalit Jagseer Singh's troubles do not seem to end in this poignant portrayal of life in a small village of Punjab in newly independent India. Jasbir, the son of the sharecropper, Thola, is treated as a brother by the landlord Dharam Singh. The landlord's son, however, does not continue this family tradition. As Jasbir's mother belongs to a nomed caste, the hero's love for the bride of the impotent barber Nika is fraught with problems. Symbolically, the building of Jasbir's father's tomb and then of his own tomb hastens jasbir's physical deterioration and death.

A father encourages his daughter to marry a dying man in order to inherit his wealth. A father encourages his daughter to marry a dying man in order to inherit his wealth in this social drama set in 1830s India. She is expected to practice the ancient Hindu ritual known as sati in which the widow throws herself on the burning funeral pyre of her late husband. The British colonial government has outlawed the practice, and an untouchable tries to persuade the woman to abandon the idea that will lead to her death. The dying man often comes to life to display his jealousy as people prepare for his funeral on the banks of the Ganges River. —Swarup Basak

A landowner's wife emerges from seclusion through education, defying social norms. Her newfound freedom leads to political awakening when her husband's old friend brings revolutionary ideas to their door. When the movie opens, a woman is recalling the events that molded her perspective on the world. Years ago, her husband, a wealthy Western-educated landowner, challenged tradition by providing her with schooling, and inviting her out of the seclusion in which married women were kept, to the consternation of more conservative relatives. Meeting her husband's visiting friend from college, a leader of an economic rebellion against the British, she takes up his political cause, despite her husbands warnings. As the story progresses, the relationship between the woman and the visitor becomes more than platonic, and the political battles, pitting rich against poor and Hindu against Moslem, turn out not to be quite as simple as she had first thought. —Anonymous

The first Indian movie to be made in Sanskrit. The movie follows the life and times of Adi Shankaracharya - the founder of the non-duality (Advaita) school of Indian philosophy. The Jiv-Atman or Individual Self is a mere reflection or limitation of Singular Atman in a multitude of apparent individual bodies. —Thathachari <thaths@utxsvs.cc.utexas.edu>

Arvind Desai is the only son of a rich businessman who deals in luxury handicraft products. His feelings for his father are mixed. While he hates his dominating nature, he admires his power and lack of scruples.

Sanjay is on a pilgrimage journey to Varanasi and remembers his life in flashbacks. Sanjay wanted to study art, but his domineering father, an engine-driver in retirement after a crippling injury, insisted that a railway job, with its security, was the best thing for him. So Sanjay ended up as a train conductor, unhappy with the career forced upon him, and the mechanical, meaningless life that he lives. In the course of his duty on the train, he runs into a working girl, Shalini and feels attracted to her. His father hears about his interest in Shalini, strongly disapproves of it and intervenes in Sanjay's life once again. Unable to stand up to his father, Sanjay soon finds himself married to a village girl. Life becomes even more unbearable for Sanjay. He takes to wandering and seeks comfort in drink and brothels. One final chance comes his way to break loose from his shackles and plan a new life with Shalini. Anna (Om Shivpuri) and his son, Sanjay (M.K. Raina) live in a small town. Anna is a train-driver and works for the Railways. One day his train meets with an accident and he his right leg gets paralyzed. When Sanjay grows up, Anna gets him a job with the Railways as a Ticket Checker. Sanjay gets accustomed to his job so much that he starts more and more time on the train then in his house. During his travels he comes across a young lady passenger, Shalini (Raakhee). They meet often and explore having a relationship. Thinking that Shalini wants to marry him, he accompanies her to meet her grandfather and two siblings. He is shocked when Shalini introduces him as a married man, working as her co-worker. Sanjay, in disbelief, must find out why Shalini lied about this marital status and his employment with the Railways. His father finds out about his affair with Shalini, and arranges his marriage with another girl from the village. Sanjay, reluctantly marries but is unable to get Shalini out of his mind and heart.

Film is Based on Duvidha by Vijayadan Detha, it's about merchant's son, whose relationship with his young bride, Lachhi is thwarted by his work and a ghost who falls in love with her, resulting in the ghost soon impersonating the husband.

Aashad Ka Ek Din is an adaptation of the play that is based on Kalidasa's life in three acts. Kalidasa is renowned as one of the greatest writers, poets and dramatists in the history of Sanskrit language.