Chennai to host festival to mark 100 years of cinema

CHENNAI: To mark the centenary of Indian cinema, Chennai will host a series of events in the coming months. Governor K Rosaiah and chief minister J Jayalalithaa have invited President Pranab Mukherjee to participate in a gala event being organised by the South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce here in September. "The dates of the events will be finalised once we get a confirmation from the President's office," said one of the organisers.

The events are expected to recap the contributions of various stalwarts of the Indian film industry, right from Dhundiraj Govind Phalke alias Dadasaheb Phalke up till now. Phalke's epochal feature film Raja Harishchandra, released on May 3, 1913, marked the birth of one of the biggest film industries in the world. Indian cinema, over the years, has acquired many characteristics. For instance, music and songs have retained pre-eminent positions despite the myriad cultural diversities in the country.

Madras became the hub of the south Indian film industry by the mid-1920's. While S S Vasan, A V Meiyappan and Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu set up production houses in Madras and flourished making Tamil and Telugu films, J C Daniel, a Tamil settled in Thiruvananthapuram set up a studio, The Travancore National Pictures, in 1926 in Kerala.

His film, 'Vigathakumaran' that depicted a contemporary social theme of a lost child returning home after years of captivity in Sri Lanka, was a flop because the upper caste Hindus took objection to a downtrodden girl playing the role of a Nair woman. Daniel had to shut shop and shifted to Agantheeswaram in Kanyakumari, where he spent the rest of his life.

Despite being the father of Malayalam cinema, Daniel was denied that recognition till his death in 1975. In a late realisation, the Kerala government instituted J C Daniel award in honour of him in 1992.

Meanwhile, Indian cinema underwent a transformation. Talkies put an end to the silent era with the release of 'Alam Ara' by Ardeshir Irani in 1931. The same year, three more talkies were released — 'Bhakta Prahlad' in Telugu, 'Jamai Shasthi' in Bengali and 'Kalidas' in Tamil. Since then the industry has seen stalwarts like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ritwik Ghatak, G Aravindan, Mani Rathnam and Girish Kasaravalli.

With 3D images, visual effects and hi-tech productions, India is now the world's largest producer of films.

Source: http://to.ly/m1iH