Screen1900 Brigitte Schulze Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (1870-1940), Bombay’s Film Pioneer

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (1870-1944) made his first long narrative films (Raja Harischandra, Mohini Bhasmasur, Lanka Dahan) along with remarkable non-fiction films (eg. How Films are Made, Rock-Cut Temples of Ellora) between 1912 and 1917. Whether fiction or non-fiction, all his early film projects testify Phalke’s philosophy that he as an artist wished to stimulate cognition into a metaphysical ‘reality’ which he called “truth”; and that “moving pictures” were an art form on its own terms. His innovative ideas necessitated photographic realism. He thus filmed on location, and the rather small film camera acquired in England enabled him to make the landscapes, gardens, rivers and temples around Nasik, were he lived and worked then, as much protagonists of his films as the actors.   Contrary to the tone of the National Film Archive of India (www.nfaipune.gov.in) representing the Phalke persona as a pioneer of an exclusive national ‘heritage culture’ I maintain that the most surprising of Dhundiraj Govind Phalke's 'Indianness' in Raja Harischandra is that it not only broke with most of the conventions of publicly representing or politicising 'Indian folklore', but that it could actually have emotionally and mentally moved its spectators towards a different kind of cognition, namely being compassionate with an ‘equality’ which recognises individual difference: between man and woman, Brahmin and non-Brahmin, Hindu and Muslim, Indian and English, etc., and that this could happen well before 1918, when Mohandas K. Gandhi started his agitations.  

Excerpts of Phalke`s Bharatiya Chitrapat article, Navyug (1917 and 1918)  

Facsimile of Phalke’s Bharatiya Chitrapat article, part 4, Navyug (Sept 1918)