Mani Kaul

7.0 Uski Roti/ A Day's Bread (1969)
6.2 Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1971)
7.0 Duvidha/ Indecision (1973)
Ghashiram Kotwal (1976)
7.0 Satah Se Uthata Admi (1980)
Dhrupad (1982)
Nazar (1991)
Idiot (1992)
The Cloud Door (1995)
6.5 Naukar Ki Kameez/ The Servant's Shirt (1999)
Bojh/ Burden (2000)
Ik Ben Geen Ander/ I Am No Other (2002)
A Monkey's Raincoat Nederland (2005)

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Mani Kaul (India, 1944), born Rabindranath Kaul, was one of the key directors of "parallel cinema" of the 1970s. Kaul, who graduated from the Film and Television institute of India (FTII) in Pune in 1966, and participated in painter Akbar Padamsee's interdisciplinary Vision Exchange Workshop set up in Bombay in 1969, broke with the conventions of Indian cinema in his first film, Uski Roti/ A Day's Bread (1969), based on a short story by Mohan Rakesh. Influenced by Bresson (and perhaps Robbe-Grillet), Kaul employed non-professional actors. The film was shot with seven camera distances, from 1.5 meters to to 3 meters, create the cinematic equivalent of the musical octave and its seven notes. He also experimented with eccentric and even random editing . His composition of cinematic space was inspired by the large canvases of the Hungarian-Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil.

It was followed by Ashadh Ka Ek Din (1971), based on a play by Mohan Rakesh, and Duvidha/ Indecision (1973), based on a folk tale by Vijaydan Detha, his first film in color and the first set in the desert landscape of Rajasthan, influenced by Vijaydan Detha's writings on the local folklore, particularly the mythical and magical elements.

In 1976 he co-founded the Yukt Film Co-operative, a 16-member collective of former students of the Film and Television Institute of India, and was one of the four directors of their Ghashiram Kotwal (1976), an adaptation of Vijay Tendulkar's satirical play (1972), an avantgarde experiment in collective film-making.

Then came: Ghashiram Kotwal (1976), Satah Se Uthata Admi (1980), based on the writings of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, Dhrupad (1982), two Fyodor Dostoevsky adaptations, namely Nazar (1990) and Ahmaq/ Idiot (1991), Naukar Ki Kameez/ The Servant's Shirt (1999), an adaptation of Vinod Kumar Shukla's novel and perhaps his most pure articulation of minimalism a` la Bresson and Ozu (and perhaps Japanese haiku), Bojh/ Burden (2000). Ik Ben Geen Ander/ I Am No Other (2002), and A Monkey's Raincoat Nederland (2005).

He died in 2011.