INDIAN DOCUMENTARY FILMS - HISTORY

The Indian Documentary was pioneered by three Europe trained filmmakers:

P.V. Pathy – trained in Paris

D. G. Tendulkar – student of Sergei Eisenstein in the Moscow Film School

K. S. Hirlekar – studied filmmaking in Germany.

They led the development of Indian documentary by introducing editing, a vivid and commentary style, effective music and sound effects.

Between 1920 and 1940 – more than 1500 short films were produced.

In 1947, Paul Zils with Fali Billimoria established the Documentary Unit of India.

A master editor and producer trained in Germany, Zils made a number of notable films: ‘Hindustan Hamara’, ‘Zalzala’, ‘The Ripening Seed’, ‘The Vanishing Tribe’ and ‘Kurvandi Road’.

Zils got together with Jag Mohan to edit the quarterly periodical ‘Indian Documentary’.

In 1949 and 1950 around 32 black-and-white documentaries were made. The films were dubbed in five Indian languages – English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu. Today around 16 languages are in use. In June 1949, the first three documentary films were released: ‘Kashmir Carries on’, ‘India Independent’ and ‘Immersion of Gandhiji’s Ashes’.

The first Indian documentary to win an international award in a foreign film festival was ‘Rajasthan Series I – Jaipur’.

The first feature length documentary made by the Films Division was released in 1955 – ‘Mitrata ki Yatra’.

Other films that won prizes in overseas film festivals were : ‘Symphony of Life’ in 1955, ‘Wonder of Work’ in 1957, and ‘The Challenge of Everest’ which won four awards. Thus, in the first two decades of the Indian documentary, over 250 documentaries were produced both by the Films Division and other producers.

Some of the award winning outside producers were: S. Sukhdev ‘India’67’, Clement P. Baptista ‘Handicrafts of Rajasthan’, Shyam Benegal ‘Close to Nature’, N. S. Tappa ‘Song of the Snows’, Satyajit Ray ‘Rabinranath Tagore’ and Tapan Sinha ‘Jagdish Chandra Bose’.

Other filmmakers of note who made a valuable contribution to the development of Indian documentary were V. M. Vijaykar, K. T. John, Santi P. Shoudhary, K. S. Chari, Pramod Pati, S. N. S. Sastry, T. A. Abraham, Neil Gokhale and Loksen Lalvani.

 

Reference: Documentary Films and Indian Awakening by Jag Mohan

 Read more about Documentary Films by clicking the link: https://digital.lib.hkbu.edu.hk/documentary-film/india.php