ISBN 978-81-925489-2-0 - ramniranjan jhunjhunwala college

throughout the film “Saint Dnyaneshwar". I would like to conclude with a prayer, “May evil be destroyed.
May the wicked learn to love virtue. Every living being should feel a sense of kinship and love”.
References:
B.P. Bahirat - The Philosophy of Jnanadeva
www.youtube.com/watch?y=AyethBFqLeU
movies.msn.com/movies/movie-synopsis/sant-dnyaaneshwar-01
THE BIRTH OF CINEMA IN INDIA – SILENT ERA (1899 TO 1930)
Lily Bhushan, Principal, KES Shroff College
lilybhushan@yahoo.co.in
Introduction
Like most things in India, the origins and history of cinema in India is quite fascinating. Fascinating - because
the origins of cinema started sometime in 1890s and not 1913 as it is popularly known now. Also, if one looks
back, one can understand how the society and certain situations influenced the way the film industry works now
- 100 years down the line.Indian cinema, like most other cinemas, has evolved over time, responding to various
social, cultural and political contexts and challenges. In order to understand the distinctiveness of Indian
cinema, its distinguishing traits and privileged concepts, one has to examine the forces that shaped Indian films
and the changes in theme and style over the nine decades of its existence. The birth of Cinema in India can be
attributed to the Lumiere brother`s. Only a few months after the Lumiere brothers introduced the art of
cinematography in Paris in 1895, cinema made its presence felt in India. The Lumiere brothers` held their first
public showing at Mumbai`s Watson`s Hotel on July
(7, 1896 and the Times of India glowingly referred to it as the `miracle of the century`). Westerners, who were
quick to realize the value of India as a site of filmmaking both because of its natural beauty and its `exotic`
culture, were inspired to make films that used Indian scenery and culture. However, this phenomenon did not
create much of a ripple. The Indian viewer took the new experience as something already familiar to him,
thanks to the art of shadow play and the tradition of story-telling with hand-drawn images accompanied by live
sound. The Lumiere brothers thus pioneered the art of film-making in India with the astonishing invention of
CINEMA.
On 28th December 1895, two mad French men by the names Louis and AugusteLumiere presented the first
display of a projected motion picture to a small private audience in France. Several thousand miles away in the
land of colonial India, no one had even dreamt of such a technology let alone hear of it. The country was in the
throes of a political and freedom movement and the only means of entertainment available to the masses were
the traditional travelling theatre troupes (Nautanki), puppet theatre (KathputliNatak) and the occasional dance
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