Fali Bilimoria

Fali Bilimoria (born March 18, 1923 in Bombay , † January 14, 2001 in Mumbai ) was an Indian documentary filmmaker .

Life

Bilimoria was born in Bombay, the son of a Parish lawyer. In 1946 he broke off his medical studies shortly before his exams and joined the Congress Party , whose party congresses he filmed in 1947 and 1948. From the late 1940s he worked closely with the documentary filmmaker Paul Zils and the cameraman PV Pathy in Zils' production companies. Some of her films crossed the line between documentary and fictional narrative through the use of professional actors, such as Sombhu Mitra in the documentary on Malaria A Tiny Thing Brings Death (1949). Bilimoria shot commercials for Shell, British Transport, Deutsche Condor, USIS and private American sponsors. For the latter, he recorded an interview with Jawaharlal Nehru in 1958 to prove to the US State Department that Nehru was not a communist. His films about Indian cooperatives in agriculture, weaving, fishing and construction supported the foreign aid of the Colombo Plan , as well as the imports of agricultural technology and artificial fertilizers in the context of the so-called Green Revolution . After Zils' return to Germany, he founded his own production company Fali Bilimoria Productions and also supported Zils with his documentary recordings in India and Ceylon in the 1960s .

Bilimoria 's documentary The House That Ananda Built (1967) produced for the Films Division was the first Indian documentary to be nominated for an Oscar. He was previously represented with Growing Coconuts at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival in the short film section competition.

In 1987 he withdrew from active film work. He was a jury member at the 2nd Mumbai International Film Festival in 1992. At the 1998 festival, he was awarded the V. Shantaram Lifetime Achievement Award.

Filmography

• 1947: Congress Session 1947
• 1948: Congress Session 1948
• 1948: Mother-Child-Community *
• 1949: White Magic *
• 1949: The Last Jewel *
• 1949: Flying Goods Wagon
• 1949: General Motors in India *
• 1949: A Tiny Thing Brings Death *
• 1950: Our India *
• 1954: Ujala *
• 1956: Major Industries of India: Textiles *
• 1956: A Village in Travancore *
• 1956: A Village in East Punjab
• 1956: Major Industries of India: Iron and Steel *
• 1956: Growing Coconuts
• 1957: The Land of Bengal
• 1957: Andhra
• 1958: The Vanishing Tribe *
• 1958: In Your Hands
• 1958: Interview with Jawaharlal Nehru
• 1959: Fifty Miles from Poona *
• 1959: Maharaja Meets a Challenge
• 1960: Four Families
• 1961: Rivers of Life / Jeevan Ki Nadiyan
• 1961: Coir Worker
• 1961: New Marketplace
• 1962: Comparative Religions
• 1965: The Weavers
• 1966: US Vice President Humphrey Visits India
• 1967: The House That Ananda Built
• 1968: Water
• 1971: Crisis on the Campus
• 1972: The Last Raja
• 1974: Look at Us Now
• 1975: Women of India
• 1976: A Small Family
• 1976: There Is Another Way
• 1980: Warning Signal
• 1982: The Ganga Bridge
• 1985: People of India: The Anglo-Indians

(* Co-director with Paul Zils)

literature

Entry on Fali Bilimoria in Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen: Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema , p. 66, 2nd edition, New Delhi 1999

Web links

• Fali Bilimoria in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Filmography at Complete Index to World Film
• Short biography on the MIFF website
• Fali Bilimoria in the Indian documentary

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sanjit Narwekar: Directory of Indian movie-makers and films , 1994, p 56
2. ^ India Who's who 1990-91 , p. 279
3. ↑ Mass Media in India , 2002, p. 157
4. ↑ http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/3662/year/1956.html
5. ↑ MIFF '98: A documentary treat ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.