Phalke gets a celluloid tribute
Nearly 96 years after he made the first Indian film, the father of Indian cinema Dadasaheb Phalke finally gets the perfect celluloid tribute.
A film in Marathi is being made on him."I wonder why it was ignored but better late than never," actor Vibhavari Dixit says.
One can guess that there would be a good reaction to a film that finally pays a tribute to the filmmaker who started it all in India.Dadasaheb Phalke made the first Indian film called Raja Harishchandra.
But how did it all happen and how did a commercial photographer who worked in a printing press, decide to make a film - a medium unheard of in India at the beginning of the 20th century.
And making the first attempt in trying to unravel this pioneer is Paresh Mokashi, writer, producer and director of the Harishchandrachi Factory, a Marathi film, which he claims is neither a tear-jerker nor just a nostalgic trip on the great man."I'm treating it as an entertaining story of a common man who did something extraordinary," Mokashi says.
The lead actors Nandu Madhav who plays Dadasaheb and Vibhavari Dixit who plays his wife, learnt quite a lot about the father of Indian cinema."He was a very dashing man. All that I have heard and read about him suggests that he was quite an uncommon man, he was also very stubborn," actor Nandu Madhav says.
"It's the madness. There is no reference point to why he did what he did," Vibhavari says.With a budget of Rs 2 crore, Harishchandrachi Factory will be the costliest Marathi film till now, and with ace set designer Nitin Desai working on re-creating Girgaon of the 1900's, its a work that cineastes would definitely want to catch when it hits theatres by the end of this year.
And with plans of releasing the film in five different languages, it could be a history lesson that film buffs would not want to miss.
