CHENNAI, June 10 -- In 1977, a first-time director walked the Tamil film camera out of the painted studio floors of Madras and planted it in the red soil of a village. Tamil cinema never entirely came back indoors. Bharathiraja, who made that walk with "16 Vayathinile" and spent the next five decades as the medium's great rural conscience, died at his home in Chennai on Wednesday morning. He was 84.

His death, after a long stretch of failing health, was confirmed in reports across the Tamil press and carried by Ada Derana and Indian outlets within the hour. He had been hospitalized in December with breathing difficulties, and the exact cause of death has not been announced.

The scale of what he changed is hard to overstate. Before "16 V...