In the late 1950s, Hemanta ventured into movie production under his own banner: Hemanta-Bela productions. The first movie under this banner was a Bengali film directed by Mrinal Sen, titled "Neel Akasher Neechey" (1959). The story was based on the travails of a Chinese street hawker in Calcutta in the backdrop of India's freedom struggle. The movie went on to win the President's Gold Medal — the highest honour for a movie from Government of India. In the next decade, Hemanta's production company was renamed Geetanjali productions and it produced several Hindi movies such as "Bees Saal Baad", "Kohraa", "Biwi Aur Makaan", "Faraar", "Rahgir" and "Khamoshi" — all of which had music by Hemanta. Only "Bees Saal Baad" and "Khamoshi" were major commercial successes.