Vishal Bhardwaj... multi talented

Vishal Bhardwaj (born 4th of August 1960) is an Indian film director, writer, screenwriter, music composer and playback singer.


Vishal Bhardwaj started playing harmonium for little known ghazal singers at the various food festivals in Delhi’s Pragati Maidan. He was later introduced to R.V. Pandit, who offered him a job in his CBS music company in Delhi.


Vishal Bhardwaj was recommended by a friend to the filmmaker Gulzar, with whom he successfully collaborated on TV serials such as Jungle Book, Alice in Wonderland and Gubbare. Vishal composed the music for Maachis, a film directed by Gulzar. The musical score for Maachis was received to critical and commercial acclaim and earned Vishal the Filmfare R D Burman Award in 1996. In 1999, Vishal received the Rajat Kamal award for Best Music Director at the National Film Awards for his critically acclaimed score in Godmother. Since then, Vishal has scored music for several Hindi films such as Satya, Chachi 420, Omkara, Kaminey, Ishqiya and a host of other popular projects.


Vishal Bhardwaj came to Mumbai to become a music composer, he took to directing movies only to create the opportunity to compose music.His interest in film direction kindled after watching the retrospective of Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski during a film festival in Kerala^. His first directorial debut was children's film Makdee which was critically acclaimed. He then made the first of his Shakespearean adaptation, Maqbool, based on Macbeth. This was followed up by another children's film, The Blue Umbrella based on Ruskin Bond's story of the same name. This film also met with critical acclaim throughout. Omkara marked the second of Vishal's Shakespearan endeavours, this time an adaptation of Othello. Omkara was a great success internationally and a musical hit, affirming his status as a music director as well.

He is known for his collaborations with Gulzar, who had Vishal as his music composer in all his directorial ventures since Maachis. And Gulzar provided lyrics to all of Vishal Bhardwaj's films.
He also did some second unit work for the legendary Francis Ford Coppola on the latter's film Youth Without Youth.
His next directorial release was Blood Brothers, a 11-minute short film, which is part of Mira Nair's series of HIV-AIDS awareness films Guillermo Navarro is the cinematographer on this film. He has also done music direction in the film No Smoking'

Kaminey, starring Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra, released on 14 August 2009, met with early commercial success and critical acclaim.
Ishqiya, (not as a director, but as a producer, writer and composer), starring Naseeruddin Shah, Arshad Warsi and Vidya Balan, received mostly positive reviews earning more than 15 crores in the first two weeks of its release.

AWARDS::
OMKARA:: Winner, National Film Award - Special Jury Award
                       Nominated, Filmfare Award for Best Director- 2006
                
KAMINEY::  Nominated, Filmfare Award for Best Director- 2009

The Blue Umbrella a.k.a Chhatri Chor::  Winner, National Film Award for Best Children's Film, shared with Ronnie Screwvala.- 2005

GODMOTHER:: Winner, National Film Award for Best Music Direction 1999.