Time has come to raise a toast to Indian celluloid that’s a century-old. It’s a moment of great national pride and glory for all cinema lovers. Significantly, completion of 10 decades of movies is creating a buzz in the land of cineastes.
Lights, camera, action!
It was an era where working in cinema was a taboo, where a man with vision and courage made it possible. Mumbai’s affluent crowd had no idea of witnessing something ground-breaking. Minus sound everything was perfectly set on April 21, 1913, at Olympia theatre where Dadasaheb Phalke premiered the first ever full-length film, Raja Harishchandra. A silent movie based on the legend of King Harishchandra, enumerated in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, it was released on May 3, 1913.
Indian film industry that Dadasaheb gave birth to inadvertently with his first film enters its centenary year, India is ready to pay an abiding tribute to the date he immortalized with the first public screening of the maiden full-length Indian feature film. In a nation, where more than 1,000 films are made every year, in multiple languages, when we celebrate a century of filmmaking excellence, how do we define Indian cinema?
Indian cinema encompasses regional films (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Bengali, Gujarati, Bhojpuri, Punjabi etc) but the larger stake comprise of Hindi film industry. Larger than life movie sets for candy floss romances salted with lavish song-dance sequences shot in exotic locales, spunky underworld flicks, bone-tickling comedies, well-crafted offbeat cinemas, jaw-dropping action capers to social melodramas and titillating stories — the Indian movies have just about touched every genre of entertainment.
Everything is so fascinating here, from top grosser blockbusters to multiplex movies tailor-made for overseas Indians, to colourful crossover films with NRI connect high on emotional content to tug at the heartstrings of homesick Indian diaspora, the platter is dynamic and diverse.
Fraternity Action
Here’s an ode to every individual who strives to make that virtual space seem to be a part of our daily lives. A documentary is being made as a tribute to celebrating the 100 years of cinema, four distinguished filmmakers Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar and Dibakar Banerjee will be making 20-minute short films each based on Bollywood. The four documentaries are being made under the banner of Flying Turtle Films which will give varied taste under one maincourse and will be later clubbed and released as an 80-minute documentary film, titled ‘Bombay Talkies’.
According to a leading film website, Zoya’s documentary has planned is titled Sheila Ki Jawaani and narrates the story of a young boy and his obsession with the song Sheila Ki Jawaani. The film will unfold the tales of all the popular item numbers and how peppy and raunchy songs have become over the century. Zoya’s film features Katrina Kaif and also an in-depth interview with Ranveer Singh. While Anurag’s film untitled yet, but it is confirmed that Priyanka Chopra will be a part of it. Karan Johar and Dibakar haven’t started work on their projects yet.
Government Action
From this year onwards, the National Film Awards will be given away on May 3 every year. At the 59th National Film Awards ceremony in New Delhi, Ambika Soni, minister for Information and Broadcasting, said, “There are a few interesting projects to commemorate the centenary of Indian cinema. We are planning to open a museum of Indian cinema. The museum will be in Mumbai, in the heritage building of Gulshan Mahal. It will be ready before May 2013.”
The museum will showcase the history of the industry and its global impact. It will be a storehouse of information, artifacts, equipments like cameras, editing and recording machines, projectors, costumes, photographs and other material. The properties, dresses, sets, tapes, vintage equipment, posters, copies of important films, prints, promotional leaflets, developing equipment books, biographies, sound tracks, trailers, transparencies, cinema magazines and statistics covering film distribution are also expected to be displayed in a chronological manner.
‘Climax’ Action
Let the festivities begin. The journey from silent films to contemporary cinema has been amazing and that becomes a part of our heritage. From producers to directors, from exhibitors to distributors, from actors to villains, from musicians to technicians all are basking in glory of magical century of Bollywood. The Indian film industry will celebrate 100 years of its existence in 2013. The Indian cinema story continues… The Indian film industry continues unabated.
