A. Bhimsingh

A. Bhimsingh or Bhim Singh (1924–1978) was an Indian filmmaker who worked predominantly in Tamil cinema. Apart from Tamil, he made films in other languages that include 18 films in Hindi, 8 films in Telugu, 5 films in Malayalam and 1 film in Kannada. Hailing from Andhra Pradesh, he started his film career as an assistant editor with the film-making duo Krishnan–Panju in the late 1940s. Later, he became an assistant director before evolving as an independent director. His films mainly dealt with family and relationships. He made a series of films all of which started with the Tamil syllable pa, mainly with Sivaji Ganesan.

Bhimsingh married Sona, the sister of Krishnan, in 1949. He had eight children with her; one of his eight children, B. Lenin is a film editor, and another son of his, B. Kannan, is a cinematographer, who is known for his frequent collaborations with many of Bharathiraja. Later, Bhimsingh's eldest son Naren married Panju's daughter. Bhimsingh was also married to actress Sukumari in 1959 and has a son Suresh Bhimsingh.

Many of Bhimsingh's films began with the syllable Pa, starred Sivaji Ganesan, had music by Viswanathan–Ramamoorthy, and lyrics by Kannadasan. According to Ganesan, Bhimsingh hardly imagined that he would make a series of films that began with the letter Pa, implying that he "might have thought about it at first because his name starts with the same letter in Tamil. Later he might have decided to stay on with this letter for sentimental reasons."

Bhimsingh frequently associated with the same crew members. These included the assistant director duo Thirumalai–Mahalingam (who later became proper directors on films produced and written by Bhimsingh), cinematographer G. Vittal Rao and editor A. Paul Duraisingam. Ganesan appeared in 18 films directed by Bhimsingh, starting with Raja Rani (1956).

National Film Awards