The National Film Award for Best Cinematography is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the National Film Development Corporation of India. It is one of several awards presented for non-feature films and awarded with Rajat Kamal (Silver Lotus).
The award was instituted in 1990, at 38th National Film Awards and awarded annually for short films produced in the year across the country, in all Indian languages. Since the 70th National Film Awards (2022), the primary/main cinematographer is eligible to the award, thus eliminating the existing Cameraman and Laboratory Processing sub-categories.
Winners
Award includes 'Rajat Kamal' (Silver Lotus) and cash prize. Following are the award winners over the years:
Indicates a joint award for that year
1991–2021 List of award recipients, showing the year (award ceremony), film(s) and language(s) Year Cameraman(s) Laboratory Processing Film(s) Language(s) 1990 Santosh Sivan Prasad Film Laboratories Mohiniyattam English Victor Banerjee Prasad Film Laboratories Where No Journeys End English 1991 Shekar Dattatri Prasad Film Laboratories Silent Valley: An Indian Rain forest English 1992 Soumendu Roy Adlabs Sucitra Mitra Bengali 1993 Piyush Shah Moksha Bengali 1994 Anoop Jotwani Vijay Color Lab Rasayatra Hindi and English 1995 Rafey Mehmood Adlabs Tarana Hindi 1996 Hari Nair Prasad Film Laboratories Sham's Vision English 1997 Ashok Dasgupta The Trail English 1998 Ranjan Palit Prasad Film Laboratories In The Forest Hangs a Bridge English 1999 Mankada Ravi Varma Prasad Film Laboratories Kalamandalam Gopi Malayalam 2000 Prasann Jain Adlabs Rasikpriya Hindi and English 2001 Nilotpal Sarkar Prasad Film Laboratory Jorasanko Thakurbari English Irom Maipak Prasad Kalinga Lab The Monpas of Arunachal Pradesh English 2002 No Award 2003 Ranjan Palit Prasad Film Laboratory Kaya Poochhe Maya Se Hindi K. G. Jayan Prasad Film Laboratory The 18th Elephant: Three Monologues Malayalam 2004 Manoj Raymond Lobo Adlabs Girni Marathi 2005 Paramvir Singh Adlabs Parsiwada, Tarapore Present Day English and Gujarati 2006 Rajendra Janglay Raga of River Narmada Sanjay V. 2007 Savita Singh Kramasha Hindi 2008 Shariqva Badar Khan Filmlab Three of Us Jaya Krishna Gummadi Adlabs When This Man Dies Hindi and English 2009 Deepu S. Unni Adlabs Gaarud Hindi and Marathi 2010 Murali G. Filmlab Shyam Raat Seher Hindi and English 2011 S. Nallamuthu Tiger Dynasty English 2012 Abhimanyu Dange Reliance MediaWorks Kaatal Marathi Raja Shabir Khan Shepherds of Paradise Gojri and Urdu 2013 Kavin Jagtiani Reliance MediaWorks Mandrake !Mandrake ! Hindi 2014 Indraneel Lahiri Aamaar Katha: Story of Binodini Bengali 2015 Amartya Bhattacharyya Benaras: The Unexplored Attachments Bengali 2016 Alpesh Nagar Kalpvriksha Hindi Vishal Sangwai Adnyat English 2017 Appu Prabhakar Eye Test Arnold Fernandes Dawn 2018 Ajay Bedi The Secret Life of Frogs 2019 Savita Singh Sonsi Hindi 2020 Nikhil S Praveen Shabdikkunna Kalappa (Talking Plow) Malayalam 2021 Bittu Rawat Pataal-Tee Bhotiya
2022–present Since the 70th National Film Awards, cinematographer alone is awarded. List of award recipients, showing the year (award ceremony), film(s) and language(s) Year Recipient(s) Film(s) Language(s) 2022 Siddharth Diwan Mono No Aware Hindi and English 2023 Saravanamaruthu Soundarapandi and Meenakshi Soman Little Wings Tamil 2024 Edmond Ranson Life in Loom English, Tamil, Hindi, Assamese and Bengali
References
External links Official Page for Directorate of Film Festivals, India National Film Awards Archives