| Party | |
| Director: | Govind Nihalani |
| Producer: | NFDC |
| Starring: | Manohar Singh Vijaya Mehta Rohini Hattangadi Om Puri Naseeruddin Shah |
| Cinematography: | Govind Nihalani |
| Editing: | Renu Saluja |
| Runtime: | 118 minutes |
| Country: | India |
| Language: | Hindi |
Party is a 1984 Hindi-language film directed by Govind Nihalani. The film boasted an ensemble cast, including Vijaya Mehta, Manohar Singh, Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, and Rohini Hattangadi. It based on the play Party (1976) by Mahesh Elkunchwar.[1] [2] [3]
The film was produced by National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC). Party was the official Indian entry to the 32nd International Film Festival of India, New Delhi.[4]
The entire action is confined to an evening party hosted by Damyanti Rane, a rich middle-age widow and well-known patron of the arts in the city. All the cognoscenti of the urban milieu make a beeline to the event.
The party is hosted in the honour of Diwakar Barve, a celebrated playwright, who has just been awarded the prestigious National Literary Award. There are gradual revelations in conversations between attendees of the party — by turns catty, outraged, resigned and cynical — that he got the award because he is Damyanti's lover, who wields political clout, or a toady of the establishment.
Gradually, all the conversation gears towards the real winner, the hero-in-absentia: Amrit, an immensely talented and promising writer-poet who left the politics of the party circuit and literary societies to go live and work with the tribal community.
Amrit, though not present in person, shows himself again and again in their conversations reminding them and viewers of their banality, deceit, and their utter callousness towards the inequities in society at large, which brings them at cross-purposes to the true aim of all art and artistic endeavours: the ennoblement of humanity.
In a harrowing finale, which cuts to the heartland of the country, Amrit is shown to be murdered by the police as a "left-wing terrorist" approximately at the same time as the party was going on.