BEES RANIYON KA BIOSCOPE

From PhalkeFactory

KAMAL SWAROOP

A story board on Phalke


A proposal for a graphic narrative tracing and representing the assimilation and developments in industrial arts and crafts that led to the film entertainment industry by tracing and drawing the life of Dadasaheb Phalke (1870-1944), the father of the Indian film industry, his time traced and re-constructed from relics, remembrances through ages and industrially brought together through collective imagination and various skills.


1. My journey and Phalke


I was born in Kashmir in 1952.My father was an educationist. I was brought up in Ajmer Pushker. I finished my graduation in science biology in1969 and did my post graduation in film direction in 1974 from F.T.I.I Poona. Same year my film Dorothy was given best documentary film award by Filmfare.

My first job was with Children film society of India, teaching village children how to make films. In 1975 I joined I.S.R.O as a senior producer making science educational programmes for the village children; it was India’s first experiment in satellite transmission. This was the time when new wave was happening. We had formed a film cooperative and produced films like Ghashi ram Kotwall and Arvind Desai ki Ajeeb daastaan. Somewhere the idea of film cooperatives failed. And all of us parted our ways.

After this I did various things-teaching puppetry, drawing, story telling and traveling all over the country. Around beginning of eighties I started working as assistant director in foreign film productions. My big opportunity came with Gandhi where I worked as chief assistant director, at the same time continuing as a writer in art films.

In 1988 I produced om darbdar which won the Filmfare critic’s award for the best film. This was a Dadaist kind of a film. This film was about adolescence and myths of Pushker- the only place where Brahma the creator and the father is allowed to be worshiped. He is also the god of the artist and the craftsmen.

I was wondering what to do next and met a psychoanalyst friend who suggested why not make a film about learning and imagination itself. I hit upon the idea of Phalke, his life compresses all process of learning that goes in film art. He himself is a product of the industrial art school.

Since then all my work has been Phalke related—teaching, workshops, documentaries, short films, promos, subsidizing my dream to make a big mainstream film on his life and times, encompassing time span between 1870-1944.As Brahma of the Pushker is the father of the artisan, so is Phalke of trimbak given the title of father of Indian cinema-my two obsessions.


2. Tracing Phalke – A Biographical introduction


As we follow the life of Phalke we see a definite pattern of learning and essential experience that materialized/manifested itself in his filmmaking. After being trained in the scriptures and story-telling by his father, a Sanskrit scholar and astronomer, he moved to Sir J.J.School of arts where he learnt tracing, drawing and moulding.

It was the time when the mechanical means of reproduction were being introduced. Industrial arts were beginning. The traditional arts and crafts people were finding themselves jobless. A new breed of artist and crafts people were being nurtured in art school to cope with the new market demands. The idea of perspective, oil painting and representing the nature in its free form were being introduced.

After passing from J.J.School, Phalke went to the Kala Bhavan inBaroda where he learnt photography, printing and magic. He began his career as a small town photographer in Godhra but had to leave business after the death of his first wife and child in an out break of the bubonic plague. Persecuted, driven by from the city where he practiced the new art of photography (camera seen as life snatching lens), he went through a paranoia state for some time. During which he met the German magician Carl Hertz, one of the 40 magicians employed by the Lumiere Brothers. Soon after, he had the opportunity to work with the Archeological Survey of India as a draftsman. However, restless with his job and its constraints, and moved by the swadeshi and swaraj spirit, he turned to the business of printing. He specialized in lithography and oleography, and worked for Raja Ravi Varma, man producing the paintings that found homes across the country. He later started his own printing press, made his first trip abroad to Germany, to assimilate the latest technology and machinery and proved to be most successful at home as well as abroad, where his excellence received high praise But, following a dispute with his partners about the running of the press, he gave up printing and turned his attention to the moving picture.

Once again, he proved successful in his new art, and proceeded to make several silent films, short, documentary feature, educational, comic, tapping all the potential of this (dynamic explosive) new medium.

However, the market that had opened up in the face of naked skepticism and against all odds, having proved its almost unlimited financial viability, soon attracted businessmen and money minded entrepreneurs who sacrificed the aesthetic and moral concerns of the new media on the altar of commence. Phalke thought expedient to form a film company, Hindustan films in partnership with five businessmen from Bombay in the hope that by having the financial aspect of his profession handled by experts in the field, he would be free to pursue the idealistic nature of his calling. He set up a model studio and trained technicians, actors, but, very soon, as with his printing business he ran into insurmountable problems with his partners. Disgusted, disillusioned and despairing, Phalke resigned from Hindustan company, made his first announcement of retirement from cinema and retreated with his family to Kashi where he wrote Rangbhoomi, a play. (‘Rangbhommi’ fetched him accolades and honors in the realm of theatre.)

But lacking his imaginative genius, the Hindustan company ran into deep financial loss, and he was finally persuaded to return. But it did not suit his temperament that he had to surrender his unique individual identity to the demands of meeting schedules and release dates and, after directing a few films for the company, he withdrew, content to train fresh directors, and to supervise the technical side of films production.

But then the times changed and Phalke fell victim to the very cause he had championed with such zeal and self sacrifice - the onward march of technology. Sound had arrived. Unable to cope with the talkie times, the man who had fathered the Indian film industry was engulfed by an image explosion that rendered him inert and paralyzed. His own creation haunted him, mute, he fled into fragmented memories of his pre-cinema, magic lantern days, his children unaware of the tragedy of his life and excited and enthralled by a promise for the future, fantasizing with the adventures of the new silver screen god.


3. Phalke and his vision


He believed that the image in not invented but is already pre-existent in the minds of the audience. So, in order to locate the image you have to either find the audience or create them. In the end, no matter what, the audience is the author and the producer themselves, not individually but collectively. For a single image to come to light takes ages and it is impossible for an individual to do so in his lifetime. So it is the accumulated knowledge and skills that industrially produces cinema. For example, for the nineteenth century, today was like a science fiction, but the imagination was already there. It was that imagination that was forcing a necessary technology to develop almost embryologically, speeding up and accelerating the hidden genetic coding to be brought forth to light-some thing hidden inside.

For his personal vision, politically speaking, after having regained his sight after a brief period of blindness, he writes-

“In 1910, I happened to see the film, ‘The life of Christ’ at the America-India picture palace, in Bombay. That Saturday in Christmas, marked the beginning of revolutionary charge in my life. That day also marked the foundation in India of an industry which occupies the fifth place in the myriads of big and small professions that exist. While the life of Chirst was rolling fast before my physical eyes, I was mentally visualizing the Gods, Shri Krishna, Shri Ramchandra, their Gokul and Ayodhya. I was gripped by a strange spell. I felt my imagination taking shape on the screen. Can this really happen? Will we, the sons of India, ever be able to see Indian images on the screen?

“I realized that I had acquired knowledge of the fundamental crafts, like drawing, painting, architecture, photography, theatre, and magic, which are necessary for film making. It was this preliminary training in these crafts which would make my film work successfully. I wanted to make Swadeshi pictures, but where was the capital?”


4. Industrial mode of production in cinema


a) my vision of the industrial mode of production


Ford's assembly line relied on the separation of the production process into a set of repetitive, sequential, and simple activities. Cinema followed this logic of industrial production as well. It replaced all other modes of narration with a sequential narrative, an assembly line of shots, which appear on the screen one at a time.

Cinematic production uses the practices of Fordism but begin the dematerialization of the commodity form. Rather than requiring a State to build the roads that enable the circulation of its commodities, as did Ford, the cinema builds its pathways of circulation directly into the eyes and sensoriums of its viewers. It is the viewers who perform the labor that opens the pathways for new commodities. In a world organized like cinema, consciousness becomes a screen on which the affects of production are manifest.

The Loop and Spatial Montage

All nineteenth century pro-cinematic devices, up to Edison’s Kinetoscope, were based on short loops. As "the seventh art" began to mature, it banished the loop to the low-art realms of the instructional film, the pornographic peep show and the animated cartoon. In contrast, narrative cinema has avoided repetitions; as modern Western fictional forms in general, it put forward a notion of human existence as a linear progression through numerous unique events. Can the loop be a new narrative form appropriate for the computer age? It is relevant to recall that the loop gave birth not only to cinema but also to computer programming. Programming involves altering the linear flow of data through control structures, such as "if/then" and "repeat/while"; the loop is the most elementary of these control structures. If we strip the computer from its usual interface and follow the execution of a typical computer program, the computer will reveal itself to be another version of Ford's factory, with a loop as its conveyer belt.

The manual construction of images in digital cinema represents a return to nineteenth century pre-cinematic practices, when images were hand-painted and hand-animated. At the turn of the twentieth century, cinema was to delegate these manual techniques to animation and define itself as a recording medium. As cinema enters the digital age, these techniques are again becoming the commonplace in the filmmaking process. Consequently, cinema can no longer be clearly distinguished from animation. It is no longer an indexical media technology but, rather, a sub-genre of narrative painting. Given the preceding principles, we can define digital film in this way:


Digital film = live action material + painting + image processing + Composting + 2-D computer animation + 3-D computer animation


Live action material can either be recorded on film or video or directly in a digital format. Painting, image processing and computer animation refer to the processes of modifying already existent images as well as creating new ones. In fact, the very distinction between creation and modification, so clear in film-based media (shooting versus darkroom processes in photography, production versus post-production in cinema) no longer applies to digital cinema, since each image, regardless of its origin, goes through a number of programs before making it to the final film. We usually think of computerization as automation, but here the result is the reverse: what a camera previously automatically recorded now has to be painted one frame at a time. But not just a dozen images, as in the nineteenth century, but also thousands and thousands of frames.


b) Why this can only be realised through the collective approach I have adopted


A network of cottage industries and spatially distributed production zones

The text structure of the bees raniyon ka bioscope, key to the screen play, and digitally composed story board, works in a series of framed narratives, where one story opens into another into another and into a third, almost to the point where the “first” narrative recedes into a distance, to be recalled only when needed. We can think of these framed narratives as Chinese boxes, each opening to reveal another within it, or as Russian dolls, or, more abstractly, or related link in a web portal.

Its structure of frames within frames allows cycles of stories to be extracted and re-told. They can stand-alone without compromising themselves as complete, coherent narratives. At the same time, the main outer frames can be used to create resonance and depth when required. Thus, despite its immense length and complexity, the bees raniyan…provides its many -tellers with tremendous freedoms in terms of choice, style and subject.

Let us see the enormity and coordination of such production

Sign-production may be described according to four criteria: 1) the amount of physical labor which is necessary in order to produce expressions, 2) the type-token ratio, 3) the continuum which is to be shaped, and 4) the mode and rate of articulation. These four criteria may be used to describe both the modes of sign-production by which expressions are produced and the modes of sign-production by which ‘expression- are related with’ content’-.’ Modes of sign-production that may be defined by the intensity of the physical labor that they require for the production of sign-expressions include: 1) recognition, 2) extension, of a previous experience of sign-expressions. Extension involves a choice of existing or potentially existing sign-expressions as ‘tokens’ of ‘expression-types.’ Replication involves producing ‘expression-tokens’ according to the model of already-existing ‘expression-types.’ Invention involves the production of completely new sign-expressions. The process of creating the storyboard involves 3 separate phases – finding the text, writing a screenplay, and designing the storyboard. I see it as a highly labor intensive and time consuming exercise at the same time requiring specialize skills and expressions. Only a well coordinated collective can deliver a work of such density.


5. The art/Film schools in India and the vision they were set up with and where they are today.


In my understanding earlier industrial schools were set up to mass produce the artifacts for the consumption for the European market knowing the copying ability of the Indian crafts man. Or white man’s moral duty to teach the Indians the form and the laws of the nature. Teach them perspective and render and represent nature as it is. Bring in a western sensibility for which already a middle class market was developing. On the other hand the nationalist middle class was developing a new aesthetics basing their sensibilities on their own tradition which could resist the political image onslaught of the British. Becoming a part of the image warfare. When this political conflict resolved there was a change in the policy. They were looking for a new policy for the art schools. For example, F.T. I. I. was set up as a part of the Nehruvian vision. But apart from the traditional film forms that had their roots in scripture, folk dramas, some what illusionist images of Raja Ravi Varma’s painting of Indian mythological, narratives based on the music Theatre, for us - I am saying as a F.T. I. I. student, we were introduced to Ray -- who had a long three generation history from European novels adapted the Bengali sensibility in print and a realistic illustration for the same text. The development ended with him. Coding was over. Then we were flooded by European art cinema whose source is still a mystery. But the F.T.I. I. students could not render them for Indian sensibilities or were not clever enough to produce them and export them to the source country.

Around ’70 something special happened. The modern writer and painter and film maker came together and a film movement took place. Something new happened in cinema in Bombay and different regions of the country. Cinematic images found their textual source from the literature and aspiration from the painter. But that literature was realistic and easy to be made into films. That literature was different than say from the poetry/prose writing of the 40s to 60s language. This movement showed a way to the new films makers. But suddenly times changed and source to the cinema which was modern literature lost its patronage from the print media. And the commercial cinema started giving voice to a new era which was lifestyle merchandising.

But today a new kind of literature is happening, waiting to be animated into moving images. A literature that moves in times and space freely, representing a philosophy of simultaneity and non linear thing, ready to embrace the digital technology.


6. Why the art and film schools are the ideal locations for realising this idea


Cinema is a composition of pre-linguistic images and pre-signifying signs, which constitute a 'pre-verbal intelligible content' It is not a universal language, nor is it a primitive language, but is composed of images and signs that come before language. The images and signs which make up cinema are like a presupposition or necessary correlate 'through which language constructs it own signifying units. What we need is a semiotics of the Imaginary. The difference between language and imagery as modes of representation, of course has always been in dispute. That history painting should be a formally unified and concentrated composition that could reveal its meaning in a glance. This suggests that experience of thought that could occur instantly was dramatically different from our experience of language. The problem then becomes one of temporality, of the instant versus the linear. Narrative in language maintained a linear sequencing of events whereas painting and later, photography was involved in the presentation of a single moment. Twentieth century film practice has elaborated complex techniques of montage between different images replacing each other in time; but the possibility of what can be called "spatial montage" between simultaneously co-exiting images was not explored as systematically. (Thus cinema also has given to historical imagination at the expense of spatial one.) Traditional film and video technology were designed to animation; it came to be delegated to a minor form of Western culture — comics. .

Reality — interiors, landscapes, human characters — arranged within a rectangular frame. The aesthetics of these arrangements ranges from extreme scarcity to extreme density. Can the contemporary information designers learn from information displays of the past — particular films, paintings and other visual forms which follow the aesthetics of density?

Spatial montage is more purely cinematic and painterly. It combines mobility of camera and movement of objects characteristic of cinema which the “hyper-realism” of old Dutch paintings which presented everything “in focus.” In analog cinema, the inevitable “depth of field” artifact acted as a limit to the information density of an image. My aim is to create images where every detail is in focus and yet the overall image is easily readable. This could only be done through digital composting. By reducing visible reality to numbers, to achieve this….only a coming together of film and art school can make it possible ( language, films, visual arts).


6. The Workshops


Phase 1 – Finding the text: phalke narratives


STORY TEXT: UNIVERSITIES (7 CITIES)


Each work shop begins with an audio-visual presentation of the brief history of Indian cinema which also includes films about pre-cinema industrial arts and crafts related to the later development in motion-picture industry.

After acquainting writer participants from the work shop with printing, photography and early cinema they will be introduced to some philosophical historical texts relevant to our subject matter.

Suggested reading would be text like, Arts and nationalism in colonial India, Words of light, Technology of seeing, Illumination, Camera Indica, Photos of gods and few biographies of few characters relevant to Phalke stories

Then we start tracing the life and times of Phalke based on my scrap book on the same subject. This will identify all the characters, location, technologies themes related to our subject. After having an over all view we will start focusing on the individual cities. For example, in Baroda, we will only deal with Phalke in Baroda and that particular period in his growing up and related developments. Also for example ,at Trymbakeshwar\Nasik we will be working on Phalke’s childhood, his father and family, mythological stories that shaped his mind, early toys dealing with persistence of vision or say beginning of Nationalism. Since this period belongs to childhood, it would naturally expect different texture shading from the stories and writings.

Moving ahead to Baroda, he is a young man lost in learning photography, printing, music, theatre, intrigues in princely state, meeting his mentor Raja Ravi Verma. The story text would be inspired and sourced and drawn from local memories, legends, languages, paintings and unearthed unconscious of the city itself.

This exercise will be recorded on D.V camera as a visual reference in future for drawing of the story board.

The participants are ready to write a Phalke story. They come with an idea, conceptualise, plot, add characters and write a story using Phalke as the protagonist. Stories could be about a toy, a box camera, lithography, his relationship with Ravi Varma, phonograph, arrival of sound, blindness, loss of memory, a theatrical performance-depending on the city and the specific period in his biographic.

This is the time when we enter into the phenomenology of typewriters, phones, electric bulbs, relics of early technology. And writers are free to choose its genre, style but trying to invoke the times through shades and color of their text. Since no word and image remains unaffected by history

This exorcize emphasizes on historicity of the words themselves , inventing a new text for the nineteenth and twentieth century…since we don’t have much literature about how we were being shaped by arrival of new technologies I hope most of the stories will be written in vernacular and later translated for the screen play workshops.


Phase 2 – Writing the screenplay: film school: time image

After translating the Phalke stories to English, conceived in vernacular and arranged in a chronological order, we approach a film school.

We presume that most of the direction and screenplay students are familiar with the archeology and history of cinema, they are also aware of printed image and political struggle in India.

We start with acquainting the students to our journey through Phalke cities recorded on D V tapes. It also contains our discussions during writing of the stories. Students get a feel of the cities and characters who populate them.

They start going through the each story and start plotting for the big screen play. At this point of time we introduce Voglers text book on screenplay writing, hero’s Journey, based on the writings of Josef Campbell, but keeping in mind that an object can play a characters part or represent an archetype.

Based on patterns suggested by Vogler we arrive at a rough five act structure collectively, still keeping the linearity of the story intact

Next step includes a break down into sequences, scenes, bits and bytes. Now, each student takes different sequences and works individually, keeping others informed of his thoughts. All of them have to maintain a unbroken emotional graph.

After arriving at a linear structure we would be introducing the screen play on Proust by Harold Pinter to give an idea to the students about free association and a different way of looking at history and memory

Freeing linear structure to a new meaning, we will try and build the screen play into a multiplayer construction densely coded and representing a more contemporary notion of time and space, written in a language giving exact clues to the multi layered story board.


Phase 3 – Story Board


When we reach a design institute or an art school we have with us a detailed shot break down text, a massive d. v recording earlier two stages containing ideas and all the visual references collected during our pilgrimages to Phalke cities necessary for the final multi layered story board. By multi layered I mean that they are not only photographic representation but Tran formative imagination forcing a densely coded pictorial constructions. Before beginning to draw and paint first and the last frame for each shot we will be introducing a brief history of visual arts…from folk to the contemporary narrative paintings. Today it is not impossible to make cinema that is relative of say Chagal or say Gulam sheikh.

As you can see a d. v camera is playing an important role in terms of exchanging the information between different groups, and in collecting various visual references. It would be interesting to see how a written text gives way to a visual representation when two activities are brought together in an editing process.


7. Cities, periods, & themes:


1. Trymbakeshwar – 1870 – 80

Childhood –The fifth head of Brahma - Temple - Scriptures - Shadow puppets – Magic Lantern - Kath dacha - Early mechanical toys - Caves – Myth – Descent of Gaga

2. Bombay – 1881 - 86

Sir JJ School of Arts - Tracing, Drawing & Molding – Introduction to Raja Rave Vera – Galaxy of musicians – Marathi stage musicals – Myth & Play ‘Shakuntala’

3. Baroda – 1887 - 95

Kala Bhavan - Photography – Music – Magic - First marriage – Myth & Play ‘Urvashi Purva’

4. Godhra – 1896 - 98

Professional photographer – Backdrop paintings for stage – Introduction to Raja Deen Dayal – Plague – Death of first wife – Madness & Magic – Myth & Play ‘Nala Damayanti’

5. Pune & other cities – 1899 - 1902

Second marriage – Draftsman in Dept. of Archeology – Myth of Sati

6. Lonavala – 1903 - 08

Lithography – Calendar art – Advertising – Obscenity case against Ravi Verma - Death of Ravi Verma

7. Bombay – 1908 - 13

Returns from Germany after studying tri-color printing processes – Illustrated magazines – Press Act – Swaraj & Swadeshi – Blindness – Life of Christ – Making of ‘Raja Harischandra’

8. Nasik – 1913 - 20

Phalke’s studio – ‘Mohini Bhasmasur’, ‘Sati Savitri’, ‘Lanka Dahan’, - Paisa Fund - Hindustan Film Company - ‘Shri Krishna Janam’, ‘Kalia Mardan’ – Birth of Indian film industry – Division of film territories – Resigns from Hindustan Film Company

9. Varanasi – 1920 - 22 Exile - Writes ‘Rangabhoomi’, a play about the world of theatre – Declared dead – The Harischandra myth backfires in life

10. Nasik – 1923 - 36 Returns to Hindustan Film Company as production overseer – Cinematography Act – Arrival of Sound Cinema – Tries to add sound to his silent film ‘Setu Bandhan’ – after failure in talkies, sets up small business in making enamel boards

11. Kolhapur – 1936 - 38 Making of ‘Gangavataran’ – Transporting the Himalayas to Kolhapur by whitewashing the Sahyadri mountain range

12. Pune - 1938 Poverty – Failure – Rise of Prabhat Studios

13. Bombay - 1938 Felicitated at the Silver Jubilee celebration of the Indian film industry – Given grant to build house in Nasik

14. Nasik - 1938 - 44 World War 2 – Film musicals – Children – Amnesia – Retreat into childhood – Death


8. Types and Characters


1. Sadashiv Govind Phalke (18 -1906) - father, Sanskrit scholar, teacher at Elphinstone College, Bombay

2. Dwarkabai Phalke (18 -1901)- mother

3. Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (1870 - 1944)

4. Shivram Govind Phalke -Phalke’s elder brother, secretary to Rameshchandra Dutt in Baroda state

5. Phalke’s elder sister

6. Kamala (18 -1900) – Phalke’s first wife

7. Kamala’s daughter- (1807-1900)

8. Saraswatibai (1689-1947)- Phalke’s second wife


Phalke’s children

9. Bhalchandra (1907-19)- worked in the rubber industry

10. Mahadev (1909-1920)

11. Mandakini (1912-19)

12. Neelkanth (1914-1991) - Soldier

13. Prabhakar (1916-1994) - Soldier

14. Shrikrishna (1918-1938)

15. Malati (1923-19)

16. Suresh (1925-1974) - Actor

17. Deodutta (1926-19)- drop out

18. Shankar Vasudev Karandikar – Saraswatibai’s father, theatre person

19. Saraswatibai’s maternal grandfather- police officer

20. Anantrao Karandikar –Saraswatibai’s brother, theatre person

21. Bhaurao Kolhatkar- Saraswatibai’s uncle, famous actor and owner of the kirloskar music company

22. Bhalchandra, Phalke’s paternal uncle- Pharmacist and railway employee

23. U.R Athavale- Mandakini’s husband

24. Mr. Kipling- Ex-principal of Sir JJ School Of Arts, father of Rudyard Kipling - 1885

25. Pastonjee- painter, teacher of Sir JJ School Of Arts - 1885

26. Mr. Griffith- Principal of Sir JJ School Of Art - 1885

27. Mhatre- Sculptor at Sir JJ school of Art

28. Lady Hardinge- Patroness of art, Vicereine of India - 1885

29. Non-Hindu boy at Elphinstone College - 1885

30. Prof. Gujjar- principal of Kala Bhuvan, Baroda - 1886-1900

31. Sayrajrao Gaekwad III- king of Baroda - 1886-1896

32. Sir T. Madhavrao - Dewan and Regent of Baroda - 1886-1900

33. Raja Ravi Verma (1848-1906)- painter -1848-1906

34. Shankar Moro Ranade – dramatist and playwright tutor to Sayajirao’s children - 1886-1895

35. Rameshchandra dutt…administrator and writer working for Sayaji Rao1 - 886-1900

36. Sir Aurobindo Ghosh—private secretary to king of Baroda-teacher, administrator, nationalist, saint - 1886

37. Felici—Italian sculptor

38. Maulabux—Musician - 1885---1886

39. Madhvrao Patvardhan – Illusionist

40. Judge P Walawalker - Lithograph expert - 1890

41. King of Panchmahal - composer, musician - 1890--1900

42. Lala Deendayal—Photographer1896 - 1900

43. Herbert Spencer – Balloonist - 1900

44. Tribal bandits led by Bheema - 1896

45. Muslim neighbors at Godhra - 1896

46. Nicephore Niepce – Itinerant French magician – 1896 -1900

47. Dr. Ramakrishn Bhandarker – Indologist - 1900 -1908

48. Lord Curzon—1900—1906

49. Mr. Causin - Phalke’s superior at the Archeological Survey of India

50. Mr. Slasher - German printing technologist in charge of Litho press in Lonavala

51. Urvashi -Raja Ravi Verma’s model and friend -1900 -1906

52. Seth Puroshtam Dass Mavji - Owner of printing press, who later sends Phalke to Germany – 1900 - till Phalke’s death

53. Babu Rao Painter - photographer, backdrop painter, film maker –1908 -1936

54. Anandrao Painter - 1900 - 1916

55. Keshav Rao Bhosle - Actor, producer - 1908

56. Nagindass Master – Mayor of Bombay - 1910 - 1922

57. GS Ranade---owner of temple of industries -1910 –1922

58. Dr.Prabhakar - restores Phalke’s sight

59. Mehta - Manager of America India cinema house - 1912

60. Yashvantrao Nadkarni - photography and sports shop owner, Phalke’s friend and his first backer –1912 - 1918

61. Solicitor Annasaheb Chitins – Nadkarni’s father-in-law – 1912 - 1918

62. Mr. Abdul - Muslim guesthouse owner in London - 1912

63. Mr. Caboun—manager of ‘Bioscope’, a cinema weekly - 1912 - 1918

64. Cecil Hepworth - owner of film factory - 1912 - 1918

65. Seth Mathuradas Vanji—owner of Dadar bungalow - 1913

66. Applicant for acting role - 1912

67. Salunke - Actor - 1912 - 1928

68. Trimbak Balaji Telang - childhood friend and photographer – 1875- 1944

69. Pandurang Gangadhar - Backdrop painter – 1912 - 1928

70. Dattatray Damodar Dabke---played Harishchandra – 1912 - 1944

71. Durgabai – Actress – 1913 - 1944

72. Kamalabai - her daughter—1912 - 1944

73. Kamalabai’s patron - 1913

74. Guest of honour at Harishchandra screening - Sir Bhalchandra Bhatwadeker, Sir Manmohan Das Ramji, Jayant Madan, Vima Dalal, Mr. Donald – Judge - 1913

75. Miss Irene Dalmarr - Dancer and singer at movie hall - 1913

76. Dattatre Telang – Hangman - 1912

77. Theatre manager in Surat - 1913

78. Reporter in Navyug and Kesari – 1913 - 1918

79. Devishanker Narayan Joshi—Phalke’s domestic servant - 1914 - 1940

80. Moti – the studio horse - 1914 - 1926

81. Lokmanya Tilak – 1896 - 1920

82. Three men from Paisa Fund - 1918

83. Princess of Indore - 1918

84. Her Divan, Shrimant Talcherkar Mamasaheb - 1918

85. King of Gawalior - 1918

86. Laxamanrao Kirloskar - Industrialist - 1918

87. Ratan Seth Tata - 1918

88. Zubeida – Actress – 1916 - 1936

89. Partners in Hindustan company-

Example.jpg -V.S. Apte—money lender

-L.B Phatak- railway contractor

-Mayashankar Bhatt- Mill agent and electric shop owner.

-Madhavji Jessing- cloth merchant.

-Gokuldas Domodardas- cotton merchant.

90. Bhogilal Dave- Mayashankar Bhatt’s nephew. 1918-1928

91. Captain Rowan - American Householder, Studio manager with Hindustan film company - 1918 - 1928

92. Master Manhar Barve- Musician of Kirloskar Music Company - 1920

93. Shankar Bapuji Majumadar- owner of Kirloskar Music Company - 1920

94. Prof. Gunpatrao - 1920

95. Narayan Hari Apte – Novelist – 1914 - 1940

96. Maharashtrian boy and his mother at Varanasi - 1920

97. Kolhatkar- Journalist for ‘Sandesh’ - 1920

98. Owner of the Rajapurkar stage company and his actors - 1920 - 1922

99. Nanasaheb Sarpotdar of ‘Maharashtra Film Company’ – 1914 -1940

100. V. Damlo- Film maker - 1921 - 1944

101. S. Fattelal - Filmmaker – 1921 - 1944

102. Dr. V Shantaram - Film maker - 1921-1944

103. Baburao Pendharkar – Filmmaker – 1921 - 1944

104. Himansu Rai]]- Actor, Filmmaker - 1935

105. Devika Rani- Actress - 1935

106. Ashok Kumar - Actor - 1936

a. Dewan Bahadur T. Rangachariar- Chairman of Film and Cinema censorship committee - 1928

107. Sir Ebrahim Jaffer - Committee member - 1928

108. Mr. Green- Bombay custom officer, committee member - 1928

109. Col. Crawford – M.L.A., committee member - 1928

110. Mr. Coatman – Director of public information, Committee member - 1928

111. Mr. G.G. Hooper – I.C.S committee member - 1928

112. Vanar Sena - 1928

113. Shri Gopali – Cameraman - 1928

114. Ardeshir Irani - Filmmaker - 1928

115. Drowning Englishwoman whom Prathakar saves - 1926

116. Dr. Demming – American sound recordist - 1929

117. Master Vitthal – Actor - 1930

118. Prithviraj Kapoor – Actor - 1931

119. Rustom Bharucha – Ardeshir Irani’s partner – 1928 - 1940

120. Y.M. Khan – Fakir in ‘Alam Ara’ - 1930

121. T.S. Mahadeo – Sound operator - 1931

122. Robert Flaherty – filmmaker of ‘Nanook of the north’ - 1935

123. Frenchman at the screening of ‘Setu Bandhan’ - 1932

124. Shahuji Maharaj – King of Kolhapur - 1921-1926

125. Vasudevrao Karnatiki – Cameraman - 1936

126. Pandit Vishvanath Jadhav – Music director - 1936

127. JBH Wadia – Filmmaker – 1935 - 40

128. Homi Wadia, brother of JBH Wadia – Filmmaker – 1935 - 40

129. Fearless Nadia – Actress - 1936

130. Sir Ibrahim Rehamatullah – Film producer - 1936

131. Chandulal Shah – Film producer / Director – 1935 - 42

132. JF Madan – Cinema owner – 1920 -

133. Dilip Kumar – Actor – 1944 –

134. Several famous personalities captured from footage of that time


And news reel footage of the spirit behind the Swadeshi movement, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.