The Birth of Cinema in India

Luminiere Brothers

Before going to the Birth of Indian cinema let us look back to the Birth of Cinema in the world.In the year 1891 Motion Picture Cameras were invented . The very first patented film camera
 was designed in England by Frenchman Louis Le Prince in 1888. He built and patented an earlier 16 lens camera in 1887 at his workshop in Leeds. The first 8 lenses would be triggered in rapid succession by an electromagnetic shutter on the sensitive film; the film would then be moved forward allowing the other 8 lenses to operate on the film. After much trial and error, he was finally able to develop a single lens camera in 1888, which he used to shoot the first sequences of moving film in the world 
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, a Scottish inventor and employee of Thomas Edison, designed the Kinetographic Camera in 1891. The camera was powered by an electric motor and was capable of shooting with the new sprocketed film. Because of the limits of technology, films of the 1890s were under a minute long and until 1927 motion pictures were produced without sound. 
In 1895 the Luminiere brothers introduced the art of cinematography in Paris. The Motion Pictures atracted the people and became popular By 1897 First Film Studio was built.
The Birth of Cinema in India can be attributed to the Luminiere Brothers. They came to India in 1896 and brought the prints. The Luminiere brothers held their first public showing at Bombay's Watson's hotel on 7th July 1897.The first show was a silent movie for 10 minutes.6 such short fims (17 meters each) were screened.The success of this show another screening was held in another venue at Novelty Theatre Bombay on 14th July 1887 Total of 24 such 10 minutes fims were screened on that night.This magic of Motion Picture was so fascinated that within a year Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar popularly known Save Dada and HiraLal Sen made 2 short films by 1899.These short films were mere attempts at capturing live theatrical performances on film.Bhatavdekar was infact the first movie maker of India Irony with him that he had a projector but not a camera .he hired a camera from England to shoot 2 scenes of 3 minutes each which were titeled DO PEHALWANON KI KUSHTI and BANDAR KO NACHATA HUA MADARI. These 2 Films were released in 1989 thus started the journey of Indian Cinema.
F B THANAVALA was the next to make films, his 2 films SPLENDID NEW VIEW OF BOMBAY and TABOOT PROCESSION were released in 1900.
In 1901 Hiralal Sen made his mark as a film producer of historical and mythological films in Calcutta. In 1905 another great personality from Calcutta theatre world J F Madan linked exhibition of cinema with production in 1905 to estabilish Elphinstone Bioscope Company. He was the first businessman to foresee imminent business opportunities of film making in India.In few years he not only build his company like Hollywood Companies but also brought Forign actresses to work in Indian films as heroines because that time Indian ladies were reluctant to work in films.
Durring the early years of 20th century a lot of cinematic entertainment was imported from abroad like Life of Christ (1901), Aladin and the Wonderful Lamp (1902), Alibaba and 40 Thieves (1903) and Napoleon Bonaparte (1904). This was primarily because India was a colony of the British Empire and a large English population lived in the country. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the availability of foreign cinema not only brought the wondrous technological advancements of the western world to India but also inspired the Indian film makers to venture into making full length feature films.

Still from Raja Harishchandra

The first full length feature film made in India was Dadasaheb Phalke’s silent opus RAJA HARISHCHANDRA  in the year 1913. Main films that followed included - Mohini Bhasmasur (1914), significant for introducing the first woman to act before the cameras - Kamalabai Gokhale, Satyawan Savitri (1914), Satyavadi Raja Harischandra (1917), Lanka Dahan (1917), Shri Krishna Janma (1918) and Kalia Mardan (1919). By 1920 India was producing more than 27 films a year which was a big number. The first Indian film makers turned to ancient epics and puranas for source material. The phenomenal success of Raja Harishchandra was kept up by a series of mythological films. The content of the films would not change for a long time till the advent of talkies and colour in the 1930’s.
The Silent Movie Era continued from 1897-1930 durring this period of 34 years nearly 1200 movies were released in India.Sad part is that very few prints are available now.