Sunday, March 10, 2013

Some Factoids on 100 year’s of Cinema



1896: First screening of film at The Watson’s Hotel in downtown Mumbai by the Lumier   brothers, who brought cinema from Paris to India.

·         1913: India’s first full length feature film Raja Harishchandra was made by Dadasaheb Phalke

·         1930: Saw the advent of sound in cinema. Alam Ara, produced by Adershir Irani of Imperial studios was India’s first ‘talkie’ released in 1931.

·         1931: Noor Jehan was the first Indian English film

·         1940s: saw the establishment of Studios. Few studios such as Wadia Movitone, Bombay Talkies, Prabhat Studios to name a few introduced organized film making - stars and technicians collected regular pay packets, film budgets were controlled. It was a lucrative trade for the Guajaratis

·         World War II and India’s independence in 1947 saw the emergence of social films

·         Post Independence, young talents like Guru Dutt(Aar Par, CID, Pyaasa, Kagaz ke Phool) Dev Anand(- Hare Rama Hare Krishna and Jewel Thief), and Raj Kapoor(- Mera naam Joker, Bobby), understood western cinema and the changing sensibilities of a free country. They successfully blend this with the Indian culture and society and created classics. Partition introduced new communities to the trade-Punjabis and Sindhis from Lahore and who managed to sideline the Gujratis 

·         1950s belonged to the musicals. RK Studio’s Awara in 1951 was the first film to break the international barriers and was dubbed in Turkish, Persian, Arabic and Russian

·         Mehboob Khan’s Mother India was nominated for the Academy award for the Best Foreign language Film in 1957

·         1959: Guru Dutt’s Kagaz ke Phool was the first cinemascope film of Bollywood

·         1960s was the age of colour films and it was established that it was here to stay. It was also during this time that the film industry was fast gaining the dubious distinction of being a money laundering opportunity, with a growing booty of black market profits. Independent producers from the North lured stars away from studios offering them more than their market value. The studio system collapsed and stars became bigger than the film.

·         The crass kitsch of the 80s gave way to glitzy glamour in the 90s. Before the new millennium, Bollywood began cleaning its act. Once again the business of streamlines.

·         2000: Bollywood is given an industry status

·      2006: coporatisation of the industry took place and studio system come back into existence.

·      2007: Hollywood Studios such as Sony Pictures, Fox Star Studios, Walt Disney, started co-producing bollywood films.

·      This era also saw technical advances in areas such as Visual effects (VFX), animation etc. Films like Rajnikant’s Robot, Roadside Romeo, Shah Rukh Khan’s Ra.One are examples showcasing India’s capability. Ra.One had 3500 VFX shots in comparison james Cameroon’s Avatar scored around 2700 shots.

·      2010-11: Global buyers start buying bollywood films for Taiwan, Korea, Germany, France, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Poland, Malaysia, China and Belgium where there is no Asian dominance




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