Manmohan Singh (Film Director)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Manmohan Singh

• Manmohan Singh is an Indian film director and cinematographer. He captured the iconic scene from the 1995 Bollywood blockbuster Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, where Shah Rukh Khan embraces Kajol in a green field covered with mustard flowers in Punjab. ^[2]Cinestaan

  

• Manmohan Singh was interested in photography since childhood and therefore attended the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune to pursue a course in cinematography. Shortly after graduating from the FTII in 1978, he began working on Raj Kapoor‘s Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978).

• In 1984, Bollywood filmmaker Yash Chopra who was looking for a cinematographer after his longtime photographer Kay Gee passed away, offered him to do the cinematography for his next film, Faasle. After Faasle, Yash Chopra and Manmohan Singh did many Bollywood films together including Chandni (1989), Lamhe (1991), Darr (1993), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), and Mohabbatein (2000).

  

• Almost no Punjabi cinema existed during the early 2000s when Manmohan Singh began directing Punjabi movies. He directed numerous Punjabi movies, including Munde U.K. De (2009), Mera Pind (2008), and Dil Apna Punjabi (2006). By mixing glamour, beauty, and aesthetics with a social message, he created a striking template for Punjabi films that other directors were inspired to use.

• During an interview, Manmohan Singh revealed that before the shooting of DDLJ began he was already busy with the shooting of another film, but due to his promise to Yash Chopra, he decided to work on it. He said,
  

  It was a very ambitious project. At that time, before the start of DDLJ, I had started my film as a director with Teerandaz (1993) with Sunny Deol and Sridevi, along with another film. I was working on both these films as director. Yashji came to me and said that ‘Aditya has asked for you to work on his film’. I told him, ‘Yashji, whenever Adi starts his film, I will do it. This is a promise to you’, and I stood by that. bIt was a beautiful experience working with Aditya, where Yashji was working as production manager for him, doing the recce, sitting on the music, the script… of course, Adi had his own vision regarding the film and stuck to it.”

   

• In 2023, Manmohan Singh was approached by the makers of Netflix’s documentary web series“The Romantics,” featuring the legacy of Yash Chopra and Aditya Chopra, to be a part of it, but due to health issues, he could not travel to Mumbai.

Manmohan Singh on the sets of DDLJ