Screening Empire from Itself: Imperial Preference, Represented Communities, and the Decent Burial of the Indian Cinematograph Committee Report (1927–28)

Abstract

On 7 July 1896, within weeks of the first moving picture being screened by the Lumiere brothers in Paris, the same film was shown in Bombay at Watson’s Hotel by their cameraman, Maurice Sestier.1 Two years later, films were being shown in tents set up on the city’s new Oval Maidan, as well as in Madras and Calcutta, where daily screenings were advertised in local papers. By the end of the century, H.S. Bhatavdekar had filmed a wrestling match, several photography journals had begun to cover moving pictures, and cinema societies had sprouted in the major port cities of India. Bhatavdekar moved from wrestling matches to historical events of somewhat greater national significance, producing and screening short films on subjects like the Delhi Durbar of 1903, which marked the enthronement of Edward VII as emperor of India. In 1912, Coronation Cinematograph released Pundalik, about a Hindu saint, shown in a double feature with a foreign film entitled, A Dead Man’s Child, and the next year, D.G. Phalke released Raja Harishchandra, the first self-consciously ‘swadeshi,’ India-made film. In the decade following, more than a dozen studios and film companies were formed in India. These firms produced about 1300 films in the silent era, exceeding British production and, indeed, all other empire production combined.