Nina Shivdasani

Nina Shivdasani Rovshen Sugati (born 15 May 1946, in Karachi, Undivided India), also known as NinaSugati SR and NinaSugati SR Shivdasani Rovshen is an Indian filmmaker and visual artist, best known for her arthouse film Chhatrabhang.

Life and career She started out as a painter, but later turned to photography. She is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York. She has exhibited her paintings and her photographs under the title Conceptual Art Imageographs. She is problaby the first Indian experimental filmmaker.

Her arthouse film Chhatrabhang (The Divine Plan) won her the first FIPRESCI Award for an Indian film at the 26th Berlin International Film Festival in 1976 and a Maharashtra State Film Award in 1975. The seventy-five-minute color documentary about a caste dilemma in rural India was shot by cameraman Apurba Kishore Bir in two weeks among villagers and edited by Shivdasani over a year. This film is accompanied by music by Edgar Varèse and a commentary written by Vinay Shukla and spoken by Amrish Puri. It was shot on location in Jogiya village and enacted by local villagers. ends with a portrait of Baba Saheb and headlines about the killiings of thousands of Harijans (low caste citizens) for having dared to draw water from wells belonging to the Brahmins.

Her 2021 three-hour-long documentary SWA: Source Within Inner Wealth is an experiental exploration inspired by the Taittiriya Upanishad.

Filmography Breaking Ground (1971) A World of all Intelligence (1972) Hope No One’s Listening (1972) Something about Transformation & Rediscovery aka The Banana Leaf (1972) Chhatrabhang (The Divine Plan) (1975) SWA: Source Within Inner Wealth (2021) Pragyanam (Consciousness) aka Nadh (Resonance) (2023)