Born Rabindranath Kaul, in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, in a Kashmiri Pandit family, Kaul first joined FTII, Pune as an acting student and later shifted to the direction course, where noted film director Ritwik Ghatak was a teacher, graduating in 1966. He was a nephew of actor-director Mahesh Kaul, who made films like Raj Kapoor starrer Sapno Ka Saudagar.
Career
His first film Uski Roti has been described as "one of the key films of the New Indian Cinema or the Indian New Wave". It marked a drastic departure from earlier Indian cinema technique, form and narrative. It was one of the early formal experimental films in Indian cinema. Ashadh Ka Ek Din, his next film, was based on a play by Mohan Rakesh. Duvidha, his third film, was his first in colour. It grew out of a short story by Vijaydan Detha and tells the story of a merchant's son, who returns with his new bride. When he departs on a business trip, a ghost falls in love with the wife. It was widely shown across Europe. He was awarded the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1974. Kaul was one of the co-founders of the Yukt Film Co-operative in 1976, leading to avant-garde films. Critics opined in "Mani Kaul's cinematic conception, fiction and documentary films have no clear demarcated dividing line." He also taught music in the Netherlands, and was Creative Director of the film house at Osian's Connoisseurs of Art, Mumbai. In 1971, he was a member of the jury at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival. He was a visiting lecturer at Harvard University for the 2000–2001 school year.
According to a tribute from Prabha Mahajan on the Indian documentary film discussion network Docuwallahs2 , Mani Kaul's significant body of work included both feature films and documentaries. In an interview Mani stated: "The dividing line from my films and documentaries is thin. Some of my films like Siddheshwari are like poetic documentaries." Mani Kaul's fellow alumni from FTII intend to put together a collective tribute to Mani Kaul and his work, and interested persons were invited to send in their thoughts on Mani as a film maker, teacher/ mentor, colleague, and as a person. Indian film criticKhalid Mohamed commented, "As a film director, he discussed the status of women, crafted visually seductive documentaries and went through a spell of interpreting Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterworks. The Russian writer’s short story A Gentle Creature inspired Nazar, shot in low, chiaroscuro lighting." Filmmaker Ashish Avikunthak, in his obituary of Mani Kaul published in Hindustan Times writes: “Mani Kaul had perfected the art of deeply moving his audience cerebrally by meticulous philosophical exposition. His films effortlessly employed temporality to create a deep spatial landscape in which human emotions oscillated with an incendiary provocation. This cinematic gesture was so subtle that if one were not attentive the meaning would be lost.”
