Rajadhyaksha Ashish - Encyclopedia of the Indian cinema

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF

Indian Cinema

NEW REVISED EDITION

photograph of Satyajit Ray by Nemai Ghose

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF

Indian Cinema

NEW REVISED EDITION

ASHISH RAJADHYAKSHA / PAUL WILLEMEN

Produced in association with the
National Film Archive of India

The authors respectfully dedicate this book to the memory of D.D. Kosambi

Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, revised edition 1999

ISBN 1-57958-146-3

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

US Cauloguing data available from the Library of Congress

First edition published in the UK and India. 1994
by BRITISH FLIM INSTITUTE

CONTENTS

We gratefully acknowledge the financial and institutional assistance of the UNESCO Participation Programme (1989); the Indian Council for Social Science Research, New Delhi; the Charles Wallace (India) Trust; Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Bombay), and Centre for the Study of Culture & Society, Bangalore.

A number of people have graciously and generously taken the time to give us advice and to comment on parts of the manuscript. Special thanks go to Nasreen Munni Kabir, M. S. S. Pandian, V. A. K. Ranga Rao, Geeta Kapur, Harish Raghuvanshi, P. K. Nair, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Anustup Basu, Shivarama Padikkal, Filmnews Anandan, Venkatesh Chakravarthy, V. Chandran, Roma Gibson, B. N. Subramanya and P. G. Srinivasa Murthy.

Stills: Courtesy National Film Archive of India; BFI Stills, Posters and Designs; Kamat Foto Flash, Syndications Today.

We thank the following contributors and consultants:

Assamese: Pradip Acharya (Guwahati)

Bengali: Moinak Biswas (Calcutta)

Bhojpuri and Rajasthani: Murlidhar Soni (Jaipur)

Gujarati: Amrit Gangar (Mumbai)

Gujarati and Hindi: Harish Raghuvanshi (Surat)

Hindi: Nasreen Munni Kabir (London)

Kannada: Dr Vijaya (Bangalore), Madhava Prasad (Bangalore)

Malayalam: P. K. Nair (Pune), R. Nandakumar (Trivandrum), Neelan (Trichur), Satheesh Poduval (Hyderabad)

Oriya: Chandidas Mishra (Mumbai/Bhubhaneshwar), Samarendra Das (Phulbani)

Punjabi: B. R. Garg (New Delhi), Anup Singh (London)

Silent Film: Virchand Dharamsey (Mumbai)

Tamil: S. Theodore Baskaran (Chennai), Preetham Chakravarthy (Chennai)

Telugu: K. N. T. Sastry (Hyderabad), I. S. A. Mohana Krishna (Hyderabad), S. V. Srinivas (Hyderabad/Bangalore)

Research and editorial assistance were generously contributed by Subhash Chheda, Amrit Gangar and their team at DadaKino, Mumbai, as well as by:

Bengali: Amitava Sen (Calcutta), Sanjit Choudhury (Calcutta)

Documentary Film: Subhash Chheda, Amrit Gangar (Mumbai)

Hindi: Kavita Anand (Mumbai), Ganga Mukhi (Mumbai)

Kannada: Pushpamala N. (Mysore/Mumbai), Sandhya Rao (Bangalore), Raghunandan (Mysore)

Malayalam: M. G. Radhakrishnan (Trivandrum), Koshy A.V. (Trivandrum), Sreekumar K. (Trivandrum) and Manambur Suresh (London)

Marathi: Vasudha Ambiye (Mumbai)

Silent Film: Partho Datta (New Delhi)

Tamil: M. Ravi Kumar (Mumbai)

This book, quite simply, would never have been realised without the assistance of a number of people within the British Film Institute (Richard Paterson, Bridget Kinally and Imdad Hussain), London, and the National Film Archive of India, Pune. In addition, we should like to thank the Nehru Centre in London, the London International Film Festival, Mr R. Advani and Ms Anita Roy of the Oxford University Press, Delhi, for their enthusiasm and support. For support in editing, designing and printing the second edition, we are especially grateful to the Repro-India team, and in particular to Rakesh Pherwanis assistance in solving often complex problems of computer software.

We are particularly grateful to Mr P. K. Nair who, in his former capacity as director of the NFAI, was a major supporter of the project and who later became one of its key contributors and authorities. His successor, Suresh Chabria, extended all the facilities of the NFAI for research and remained a source of encouragement and support. On several occasions the staff, especially the film and library staff, went beyond their official function to extend their belief in, and commitment to, this endeavour. Needless to say, none of this books no doubt numerous shortcomings can be blamed on any of the contributors and advisers who have so generously and unselfishly given their time and expertise to this project.

A special thank you, at the end of a long journey, to all the contributors of this book. Most of them worked on it in their spare time, while holding down full-time jobs as bureaucrats, teachers, journalists or researchers in areas other than the cinema, which makes their involvement, their labour and their patience all the more valuable.

The already complicated problems of gathering information across the expanse of India, the absence of established networks and the, at times, bewildering logistics of simple communication systems, always and in every instance means that in India, people depend on other people, friends and colleagues, families, associates, relatives, acquaintances, to manage - even to set up - functioning systems in lieu of those that do not work. I could not even begin to list the many friends who extended their hospitality to me, those who sent me books and references or put me in touch with others who could help. A special thank you to colleagues at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, in particular to Tejaswini Niranjana for her support and encouragement, Geeta Kapur, Vivan Sundaram, Nasreen Munni Kabir, Prof. Mihir Bhattacharya and the Department of Film Studies Jadavpur University, Nandinee Bandyopadhyay, Jhuma Basak; P. Govinda Pillai, Prof. Hiren Gohain, Dhiru Bhuyan, Pabitra Kumar Deka, Prafulla Dutta, Bobbeeta Sarma; Ashok Dhareshwar, David Windsor; Anjali Monteiro at the TISS, Sudhir Nandgaonkar and the Prabhat Chitra Mandal, S. V. Rajendra Singh, Girish Kasaravalli, Satyamurthy Anandur, Sushant Mishra, T.V. Chandran, K.P. Kumaran. Subbalakshmi Iyer allowed us the use of her bibliography of Indian cinema. A special thanks to Gudipoodi Srihari for his help in Telugu film, Filmnews Anandan for the Tamil and Dilip Das for helping us overcome difficulties in researching recent Oriya film. Gerhard Koch kindly advised us on the entry for Franz Osten. M. S. S. Pandian provided a new bibliography of Tamil film for the second edition. Randor Guy graciously reassured us about the accuracy of some of our information on Tamil cinema. Jyoti Bhatt gave us his kind permission to use and also provided the print for the picture illustrating the DMK Film entry. Virchand Dharamsey made available his encyclopaedic memory not only in his area of specialisation, but also to identify hundreds of film stills. Harish Raghuvanshi is largely responsible for whatever degree of accuracy we have achieved in our Hindi filmographies. K. P. R. Nair shot and S. B. Kanhere developed the prints in the NFAI collection for this book. Riyad Vinci Wadia provided new information, including prints of otherwise unavailable Wadia productions to help us correct and update credits, synopses, filmographies and other information on that studio and its personnel. The Films Division Commentary staff gave me access to every Indian language, a unique instance of the unique nature of many of our national institutions. Alaknanda Samarths support at all times, and especially in that rainy February of 1992 in London at a particularly critical time for this project, as well as Mrs Ranu Biswas hospitality in Calcutta and R. S. Amladis for long stretches in Pune, are the kinds of support that, over time, became integral to the logistics of this programme.