The fourth in our series on some of the important reasons behind the loss of India’s cinematic heritage: CLIMATIC CONDITIONS!!! One of the reasons for the rapid decay of film prints in our country is geographical. Having developed entirely during colonial times, the three major film industries of India were all based in port cities, possessed of a hot, humid climate, completely unsuitable for storage of films. Since these port cities, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras were the chief economic centres of the country too, the film industries, like other capital-driven ones, could flourish in them, and thus,came to be consolidated in those cities. The first Indian screening of the ‘living photographic pictures’, as it was advertised, was held at Bombay’s Watson Hotel on July 7, 1896. Within a week it was thrown open to people of all classes by screening it at a regular theatre. The first public screening of silent short films in Madras was held in 1897 at the Victoria Public Hall, again by European exhibitors. Harishchandra S. Bhatavdekar, a photographic equipment dealer in Bombay started by exhibiting imported films in 1898. Venturing later into actual filmmaking, he made what was widely accepted as the first Indian newsreel: he filmed the reception given to an Indian student for securing top honours in mathematics at Cambridge University. These efforts coincided with several other similar efforts in Calcutta and Madras too. Hiralal Sen in Calcutta filmed stage plays at the Classic Theatre, Calcutta. These productions soon became a part of travelling exhibitions around the countryside, much like touring stage productions, making them wildly popular. Several pioneers like Jamshedji Framji Madan of Calcutta, Abdulally Esoofally of Bombay kicked off their own ‘bioscope companies’ with such travelling film exhibitions and later established their own theatres in their respective cities: Madan’s Elphinstone Picture Palace in Calcutta in 1907 and Esoofally’s cinema halls in Bombay in the early 1910s. Likewise, Swamikannu Vincent of Tiruchirapalli purchased a film projector and imported, silent films from a Frenchman and set up his own travelling film exhibition (complete with tents) before eventually setting up a theatre in Coimbatore. Initially, it may have been a lack of awareness about ideal storage conditions for film stock that may have been the stumbling block. The lack of self-rule and the colonial nature of economics of the day ensured that India could not have its independent film-making industry, much less facilities for proper handling and storage of films, until the late 1940s. These factors, coupled with the inclement climate, of the port cities were responsible for the loss of most of our early, indigenous work in silent film. By 1950, we had lost 70-80% of our films produced until then. It took as late as 1964, fifty years after the production of the first Indian film, to establish the National Film Archive (NFAI) in the vaults of the erstwhile Prabhat Studio, away in Pune, in the hinterland, with a much drier climate that was more suitable for the storage of film. Images below: Advertisements for the theatre screenings of the Lumiere brothers Cinematographe (1896) and Dadasaheb Tornes Pundlik (1912).
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 05:03:37 +0000
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