The National Film Development Corporation has a new head. Actor Om Puri has been appointed as the chairman of the institution, which has single handedly sustained off beat and art cinema in India in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties. The likes of Shyam Benegal and Givind Nihalani owe a lot to NFDC

The actor, who must have worked in many NFDC productions himself during the seventies and eighties, has assumed the post as he will not be required to attend to the day today affairs of the corporation. His role has been defined as being more of the watchdog and he will have a say in the films in the kind of projects that NFDC associates itself with. Even though the concept of offbeat or art cinema has changed dramatically in the last five to ten years, with directors like Sudhir Mishra, Vishal Bharadwaj and Prakash Jha, managing to co opt the elements of popular cinema into theirs and have found a new lease of life with the coming up of multiplexes. One of the forthcoming films of Puri is Vipul Shah's Singh is Kinng.