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When the two-day session (25-26 October, 1991) with Gavind Nihalani in Jamshedpur was planned, the idea was to give participants of a Celluloid Chapter-National Film Archives of India film appreciation course held earlier an opportunity to meet a cinematographer as an extension of the course. But once Gavind was here and we had a closer look at his films, the earlier and the latest alike, we could see a richer dialogue opening up, and the idea of this documentation gradually shaped itself.

As we admire Govind's sense of theatre, and his mastery of the medium of cinema to the extent that he can so confidently relocate theatre in an unmistakably cinematic matrix, we can read yet another capacity in Govind that gives him his hold on the audience-his capacity to respond to the audience's natural craving for the theatrical.

His experience in the theatre stands Govind in good stead when he comes to cinematize theatre, which, with its realistic facility, will always be a better way to reach the people than through the musicalization of popular cinema, that can only offcentre the political concerns and dilute them to the point where one acquiesces unquestioningly. Govind does not claim a place in the so-called middle cinema, but he has opened up a way towards it nonetheless.