Hari Nair

Hari Nair Biography

Hari Nair is an Indian cinematographer and award winning photographer who predominantly works in Malayalam cinema and non-feature films. He also works in Bollywood, Bengali, Telugu and English language films. This award winning cinematographer won national award for Best Cinematography for a non-feature film in 1996 for the film, Sham's Vision. He also won Kerala State Film Awards for best photography twice – Swaham in 1994 and Ennu Swantham Janakikutty in 1997. As a cinematographer of Malayalam films, some of his best works include Apothecary, Swaham, Ben, Shutter, Theevram, Ennu Swantham Janakikutty etc.

Hari graduated from very prestigious Film and Television Institute of India. He hails from Kerala. Later he joined film industry in the 1990s and worked as photographer and cinematographer. As an independent cinematographer he marked his debut with Swaham in 1994. This Malayalam film earned him Best Photography award at Kerala State Film Awards. He also worked for 1997 National award winning Bengali film, Dahan. It was his debut work in Bengali cinema. Hari continued with his quality work and did cinematography and photography work for National award winning movie, Ennu Swantham Janakikutty.

Then he moved to Bollywood for a brief while and worked in mainstream cinema. Shool, Paagalpan and 88 Antop Hill are some of the movies he did camera work during this period, and couldn’t succeed. With late 2000s he turned active in Malayalam movies once again, and accepted other language works as well. He was one among the 12 filmmakers who returned national awards to join agitation against ‘intolerance’.

He fell in love with the movie camera early in his life. His father, K.P.R. Nair, was the head of the department of photography at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). For the same reason he grew up surrounded by cameras, and as a kid, he was fascinated by the movie camera. It seemed only natural to join FTII and learn cinematography. ‘Swaham,' ‘Ennu Swantham Janakikutty,' and ‘Dahan’ are among several visually enchanting movies he did over the years.

Published: November 03, 2018

Updated: November 03, 2018