Mandakini

From PhalkeFactory

Lokmanya Tilak reads the articles in ‘Navyug’.

With the help of Manmohandas Ramjee and Ratanseth Tata, Tilak decides to set up a private film company for Phalke.


Miss Fatima is prepared to put in capital of a lakh of rupees.

Phalke finally accepts an offer from the industrialists of Bombay, who are brokers.

Phalke Films is incorporated into the Hindustan Film Company, with Phalke as working partner, and VS Apte, Mayashankar Bhatt, LB Phatak, Madhavjee Jaisingh, and Gokuldas Damodardas as financing partners.

Phalke gives up Western dress and takes to wearing a dhoti and kameez.

Srikrishna, his sixth child, is born.

Inspired, Phalke decides to make ‘Sri Krishna Janam’.


The first film to be produced under the Hindustan Film Company banner is ‘Sri Krishna Janam’.

After this, Phalke decides to make ‘Kaliya Mardan’ with his daughter Mandakini* in the role of the mischievous child-god, Krishna. The shooting begins One day, during the shooting, Mandakini is making faces at herself in the mirror. Dada sees her and slaps her face.

Descriptions of the snake, made of rope. The apparatus with the glass tank for the trick photography showing the serpent in the water explodes, injuring Dada in the leg.

. When Krishna leaves home, Mandakini gets carried away and sheds real tears.

During the shoot one day, she falls into the water, but refuses to allow her father to pack up.


When it is finally released, ‘Kaliya Mardan’ is a huge success.[[1]]


VISUALIZATION FOR ILLUSIONLink title

Phalke tries to tell BA about how the screen shows only what you want to see.

BA does not understand. He goes in to the kitchen, unable to comprehend Phalke’s concept of the screen, which is illusion and at the same time charming and innocent.

Mandakini* comes in, playing grown ups in her mother’s clothes, mimicking Saraswatibai.

At that moment, Mandakini* signifies both woman and child, childlike and charming, yet coquettish and mature.

Like Krishna, the child-god.[[2]]

Show multiple faces of Krishna moving around the frame. [[3]]



[4] in phalke's journey




[The Family Contributes][5]

The opening of Kaliya Mardan (1919) gives one the impression that the screen test Phalke took of his daughter Mandakini, has been inadvertently spliced onto the main film. Judging from what he did earlier by making a study film on the making of Raja Harischandra, his present attempt seems to be a conscious decision and with a definite purpose. He could very well have made another short film explaining the do's and don'ts and the basic principles of acting before a movie camera, to accompany the main feature. But he preferred not to repeat himself and devised a novel method of introducing his daughter to the audiences to get their approval for her legitimacy in the film - also a kind of pioneering activity.


many years later, Mandakini walks into a garden with her brother.