Gurvinder Singh
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Gurvinder Singh is an Indian film director. He is best known for his
Punjabi language Punjabi, sometimes spelled Panjabi, is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language native to the Punjab region of Pakistan and India. It is one of the most widely spoken native languages in the world, with approximately 150 million native sp ...
films '' Anhe Ghore Da Daan'', and Chauthi Koot ( The Fourth Direction) which premiered at Venice and
Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world. Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
respectively. Gurvinder is an alumnus of the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune from where he studied film-making and graduated in 2001. He travelled extensively through Punjab between 2002 and 2006, living and traveling with folk itinerants, documenting folk ballads and oral narratives. It led to his first documentary 'Pala'. He continued to make short experimental works and documenting arts/artists for the next few years. In 2005 he was invited by avant-garde Indian filmmaker Mani Kaul to be his teaching assistant for a master-class at FTII, which led to a close association with the filmmaker who became his mentor. He translated and published a book of conversations of Udayan Vajpeyi with Mani Kaul, titled 'Uncloven Space'. His latest film is 'Infiltrator' starring Veer Rajwant Singh which is a 15-minute short story in an international omnibus called 'In the same garden'


Career

His first short film ''Pala'' was a documentary based on one of the Punjabi folk singers and was sponsored by
India Foundation for the Arts The India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) is an independent, non-profit organization that supports arts and cultural projects in India through funding and implementation. Established as a public trust in 1993, its headquarters is in Bangalore and ...
(IFA). He directed his first fiction feature in Punjabi, ''Anhe Ghore Da Daan'' (English: ''Alms for a Blind Horse'') in 2011. The film, based on the novel of the same name by well-known Punjabi writer Gurdial Singh, dealt with the angst and distress of the marginalised lower caste in Punjab. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and screened at various festivals including Rotterdam, Busan, London, Munich, etc., besides releasing at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. It won the 'Special Jury Award' at Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and the 'Golden Peacock' for Best Film at the International Film Festival of India, Goa, in 2012. It also won three National Awards in India, including
National Film Award for Best Direction The National Film Award for Best Direction is an honour presented annually at India's National Film Awards ceremony by the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC), an organisation set up by the Indian Ministry of Information and Bro ...
and
National Film Award for Best Cinematography The National Film Award for Best Cinematography is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the National Film Development Corporation of India. It is one of several awards presented for feature films and awarded with Rajat Kamal (S ...
’ at the 59th National Film Awards presented on 3 May 2012.The award consisted of 'Golden Lotus Award (Swarna Kamal)', a certificate and a cash prize of /-. The jury presented the awards for, His second feature Chauthi Koot (The Fourth Direction), an Indo-French co-production, premiered in 'Un Certain Regard' competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015. Based on two short stories by Punjabi writer Waryam Singh Sandhu, the film explores the fear, mistrust and paranoia in Punjab in the background of the militant unrest in the 1980s. The New York Times write in one review, The film has travelled to various international festivals and won the 'Grand Prix' at the Belgrade Auteur Film Festival, the Singapore International Film Festival Silver Screen Award for Best Asian Feature Film. and the 'Golden Gateway' for Best Indian Film at the
Mumbai Film Festival The Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) is a public trust that organises the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in the city of Mumbai, India. Priyanka Chopra, Priyanka Chopra Jonas is the chairperson of the trust while Shivendra Singh Dungarpur serves ...
. It received the National Award for 'Best Punjabi Film' in 2015. The film recently had a commercial release in France and is due to release in India in August 2016. He has also directed music videos for singers Rabbi Shergill and Jasbir Jassi for their respective renditions of Punjabi folk song '' Jugni''. In 2016, he was invited by a Turkish production house to direct a short film ‘Infiltrator’ (16 mins) as part of an international anthology of ten short films from ten countries, titled “In The Same Garden”. The anthology premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2016 and also screened at the Warsaw Film Festival and Mumbai Film Festival. He was invited by the Belgrade Film Festival in November 2016 to be the president of the jury for awarding the ‘Grand Prix’ at the festival. In the same year, he completed a travelogue film on the well-known Punjabi poet and friend Amarjit Chandan, titled Awaazan (Voices). The film follows the poet's meetings with old friends and comrades through East Punjab and culminates in a meeting with
John Berger John Peter Berger ( ; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to t ...
in France. He made an experimental film based on the short stories of the Colombian writer Garbriel Garcia Marquez as part of workshop with the students of acting at the FTII. The film titled ‘Sea of Lost Time’ (45 mins) premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2019. His next feature blending fiction and reality, ‘Khanaur’ (Bitter Chestnut) in ‘Pahari’ dialect of
Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; Sanskrit: ''himācāl prādes;'' "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a States and union territories of India, state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen Indian Himalayan ...
, premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in 2019 and was nominated for the Kim Jiseok Award. The film had its Indian Premiere at MAMI, 2019 and its European premiere at Rotterdam Film Festival, 2020. His new feature in Punjabi ''Adh Chanani Raat'' (Crescent Night), based on a novel of the same title by Punjabi writer Gurdial Singh, is invited at the 51st International Film Festival Rotterdam to be held from 26 January to 6 February 2022. He has taught filmmaking at the Film & Television Institute of India (Pune), Satyajit Ray Film Institute (Kolkata),
National Institute of Design The National Institutes of Design (NID) are a group of autonomous public design institutes in India, with the first institute established in 1961 in Ahmedabad. The other NIDs are located in the cities of Kurukshetra, Amaravati, Jorhat and Bho ...
(Ahmedabad) and the KR Narayanan National Institute of Visual Science and Arts (Kerala).


Filmography


Bibliography


Uncloven Space
(translation) - book of conversations of Udayan Vajpeyi with Mani Kaul (2013)


Awards

; 59th National Film Awards * 2011 – Best Direction for '' Anhe Ghore Da Daan'' * 2011 – Best Feature Film in Punjabi for '' Anhe Ghore Da Daan''; shared with NFDC (producer) ; 63rd National Film Awards * 2015 – Best Feature Film in Punjabi for '' Chauthi Koot''; shared with NFDC & Kartikeya Singh (producers) ; Others * 2011- Special Jury Award for '' Anhe Ghore Da Daan'', Abu Dhabi Film Festival * 2012 – Golden Peacock for Best Film for '' Anhe Ghore Da Daan'',
International Film Festival of India The International Film Festival of India (IFFI), founded in 1952, is an annual film festival currently held in Goa, on the western coast of India. The festival aims at providing a common platform for the cinemas of the world to project the excel ...
* 2012 – Best Film for '' Anhe Ghore Da Daan'', Imagine India Film Festival, Madrid * 2012 – Paris Project Award at the 10th Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum for '' Chauthi Koot''. Shared with ''Flowing Stories'' directed by Tsang Tsui-shan. * 2015 – Golden Gateway for '' Chauthi Koot'', MAMI
Mumbai Film Festival The Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) is a public trust that organises the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in the city of Mumbai, India. Priyanka Chopra, Priyanka Chopra Jonas is the chairperson of the trust while Shivendra Singh Dungarpur serves ...
* 2015 – Grand Prix for '' Chauthi Koot''
Belgrade Auteur Film Festival
* 2015 – Silver Screen Award for Best Asian Film for '' Chauthi Koot'', Singapore International Film Festival


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Singh, Gurvinder Film directors from Himachal Pradesh Living people Indian documentary filmmakers Film and Television Institute of India alumni Punjabi-language film directors Best Director National Film Award winners 21st-century Indian people Year of birth missing (living people) Indian Sikhs