Garm Hava

Garm Hava
Directed byM. S. Sathyu
Written byKaifi Azmi
Shama Zaidi
Story byIsmat Chughtai
Produced byAbu Siwani
Ishan Arya
M. S. Sathyu
StarringBalraj Sahni
Farooq Shaikh
Dinanath Zutshi
Badar Begum
Geeta Siddharth
Shaukat Kaifi
A. K. Hangal
CinematographyIshan Arya
Edited byS. Chakravarty
Music byBahadur Khan
Release date
  • 1973 (1973)
Running time
146 minutes
CountryIndia
LanguagesHindi
Urdu

Garm Hava (translation: Hot Winds or Scorching Winds)[1][2] is a 1973 Indian drama film directed by M. S. Sathyu, with Balraj Sahni as the lead actor.

It was written by Kaifi Azmi and Shama Zaidi, based on an unpublished short story by noted Urdu writer Ismat Chughtai.[1] The film score was given by the classical musician Ustad Bahadur Khan, with lyrics by Kaifi Azmi. It also featured a qawwali composed and performed by Aziz Ahmed Khan Warsi and his Warsi Brothers troupe.

Set in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, the film deals with the plight of a North Indian Muslim businessman and his family, in the period after the 1947 Partition of India. Made with a shoestring budget, the entire film was shot on location in Agra. In the grim months after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, the film's protagonist and patriarch of the family, Salim Mirza, deals with the dilemma of whether to move to Pakistan, like many of his relatives, or stay back. The film details the slow disintegration of his family, and is one of the most poignant films made on India's partition.[3][4] It remains one of the few serious films dealing with the post-Partition plight of Muslims in India.[5][6]

It is often credited with pioneering a new wave of art cinema in Hindi films, along with Ankur (1973), a film from another debutant director, Shyam Benegal.[1] Both are considered landmarks of Parallel Cinema in Hindi. Parallel cinema had already started flourishing in other parts of India, especially in Bengal (notably in the works of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak) and Kerala. The movie launched the career of actor Farooq Shaikh, and marked the end of Balraj Sahni's film career, who died before its release.[1] It was India's official entry to the Academy Award's Best Foreign Film category, was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, won a National Film Award, and three Filmfare Awards. In 2005, Indiatimes Movies ranked the movie amongst the Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films.[3]

  1. ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference upperstall was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference ref was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b 25 Must See Bollywood Films Archived 15 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine indiatimes.com.
  4. ^ SAI Film Series – 2007 Archived 18 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine Southern Asia Institute, Columbia University.
  5. ^ Secularism and Popular Cinema:Shyam Benegal The Crisis of Secularism in India: Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the ethics of communal representation, by Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan. Duke University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-8223-3846-7. page 234-235.
  6. ^ Our Films, Their Films, by Satyajit Ray, Orient Longman, 2005. ISBN 81-250-1565-5.Page 100-102.