In a treat for film lovers, a new book provides a rare insight to India's cinema history from the pre-Independence period including snippets of some lost movies and forgotten stars.
Comprising posters and clippings from film magazines, song booklets and advertisements from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s, "Filmi Jagat, A Scrapbook: Shared Universe of Early Hindi Cinema" produces a unique and fragmented history of movies.
The collected material in the book is reproduced in the entirety from a photo album maintained by a person named Mangaldas V Lohana. Published by Niyogi, the book has three illustrated essays by authors Kaushik Bhaumik, Debashree Mukherjee and Rahaab Allana.
Most of the pages bear the stamp with Lohana's name. Among the gems, is an image of reformer Lakhmidas Rowji Tairsee who had passed away in 1939; stills from films of national uplift that were the order of social reformist cinematic fare being churned out in large numbers by the Bombay studios during this period - Bombay Talkies' "Naya Sansar," Hindustan Cinetone's "Apni Nagaria," reformist comedy "Kunwara Baap" and an adaptation of Tolstoy's "Resurrection" called "Yeh Duniya Kya Hai?" among others.
According to authors, Lohana represented a new generation of Indians, who, in the very act of putting together his collage of film stills and the emotions expressed therein, pointed towards a seismic shift in public values among the Indian educated middle classes in the period under consideration.
