P A Backer (b. 1940-93) 1952:

Malayalam director born in Trichur, Kerala. Started as journalist for Kuttikal and Poomattukal; then assistant to Ramu Kariat (1960), the focus of a renovatory wave in Malayalam cinema; broke away to produce P.N. Menon’s Olavum Theeravum (1969), launching a second renewal. His first film, Kabani Nadi Chuvannappol, upset the censors during the Emergency. Claiming explicitly political but unaffiliated avant- gardism, his work constitutes a precedent for an independent Left cinema, e.g. of the Odessa Collective (Est: 1984 by John Abraham), Raveendran, T.V. Chandran et al. Much of Backer’s cinema, like that of his successors, comes from an effort to elaborate the forms of discourse about ‘independent’ politics, seen as a transference of repression that is either sexual (Kabani Nadi Chuvannappol; Chuvanna Vithukal), or religious (Manimuzhakkum), or the displacement of an infantile desire for salvation (Sanghaganam).

Filmography: 1975: Kabani Nadi; Chuvannappol; 1976: Manimuzhakkum; Chuvanna Vithukal; 1979: Sanghaganam; Manninte Maril; Unarthupattu; 1981: Charam; 1982: Chappa; 1985: Prema Lekhanam; Shri Narayana Guru; 1987: Innaleyude Baaki.