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Kalidas (film)
''Kalidas'' (, ) is a 1931 Indian Tamil- and Telugu-language biographical film directed by H. M. Reddy and produced by Ardeshir Irani. It is notable for being the first sound film in the Tamil and Telugu languages, and the first sound film to be made in a language from South India. It was based on the life of the Sanskrit poet Kalidasa; it featured P. G. Venkatesan in the title role and T. P. Rajalakshmi as the female lead, with L. V. Prasad, Thevaram Rajambal, T. Susheela Devi, J. Sushila, and M. S. Santhanalakshmi in supporting roles. ''Kalidas'', principally in Tamil, contained additional dialogue in Telugu and Hindi. While Rajalakshmi spoke Tamil, Venkatesan spoke only Telugu due to his lack of fluency in Tamil, and Prasad spoke only Hindi. Despite its mythological theme, the film featured songs from much later time periods, such as the compositions of Carnatic musician Tyagaraja, publicity songs of the Indian National Congress, and songs about Mahatma Gandhi and the I ...
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Ardeshir Irani
Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani (5 December 1886 – 14 October 1969) was a writer, director, producer, actor, film distributor, film showman and cinematographer in the silent and sound eras of early Indian cinema. He was the one of the greatest legend of today's Indian Cinema. He was the director of India's first sound film Alam Ara. He was the producer of India's first colour film Kisan Kanya. He was renowned for making films in Hindi, Telugu, English, German, Indonesian, Persian, Urdu and Tamil. He was a successful entrepreneur who owned film theatres, a gramophone agency, and a car agency. Life and career Ardeshir Irani was born into a Parsi Zoroastrian family on 5 December 1886 in Pune, Bombay Presidency. In 1905, Irani became the Indian representative of Universal Studios and he ran Alexander Cinema in Bombay with Abdulally Esoofally for over forty years. It was at Alexandera Cinema that Ardeshir Irani learnt the rules of the art of filmmaking and became fascinated by the ...
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Alam Ara
''Alam Ara'' () is a 1931 Indian Hindustani-language historical fantasy film directed and produced by Ardeshir Irani. It revolves on a king and his two wives, Navbahaar and Dilbahaar, who are childless; soon, a '' fakir'' (Muhammad Wazir Khan) tells the king that the former wife will give birth to a boy, later named Qamar (Master Vithal), but the child will die following his 18th birthday if Navbahaar cannot find the necklace he asks for. Meanwhile, the king finds out that Dilbahaar falls for the ''senapati'' Adil (Prithviraj Kapoor), leading the king to arrest him and evicts his pregnant wife, who later gives birth to Alam Ara (Zubeida). Irani was inspired to make ''Alam Ara'', after watching the 1929 American part-talkie ''Show Boat''. The story was adapted from the Bombay-based dramatist Joseph David's play of the same name. Made on a budget of , principal photography was handled by Adi M. Irani within four months in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). Because the studio was locate ...
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Ashish Rajadhyaksha
Ashish Vithal Rajadhyaksha (born 12 March 1957) is an Indian film scholar, art curator and cultural theorist. He was a Senior Fellow at the Bangalore-based Centre for the Study of Culture and Society. Early life Ashish Vithal Rajadhyaksha was born on 12 March 1957 in Bombay (later renamed Mumbai), India. His father was a soldier in the Indian army. Rajadhyaksha's serious interest in cinema developed in the late 1970s. In 1978, he graduated from the University of Bombay with a Bachelor of Science degree. Career Rajadhyaksha developed a keenness for Ritwik Ghatak's films after attending a course organised by the Film and Television Institute and the National Film Archive of India in the early 1980s. The first book that he authored was ''Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic'', published in 1982. Starting in 1983, he wrote numerous articles for publications such as the Calcutta (now Kolkata)-based ''Journal of Arts & Ideas'' and the New Delhi-based ''Journal of the Moving Image' ...
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News18
Network18 Media & Investments Limited, (formerly SGA Finance and Management Service and Network18 Fincap Limited) commonly referred to as the Network18 Group and sometimes as the Network18–Eenadu Group, is an Indian media conglomerate owned by the energy giant Reliance Industries, headed by billionaire Mukesh Ambani. Rahul Joshi is the managing director, chief executive officer and group editor-in-chief of Network18, and Adil Zainulbhai is the chairman of its board of directors. Network18 is the holding company of TV18 Broadcast, Web18 Software Services, Network18 Publishing and Capital18. Through its subsidiaries and franchise licensing agreements, the group owns and operates the news broadcasting networks of News18, and CNBC channels in India, the magazines of ''Forbes India'' and '' Overdrive'', the websites of ''Firstpost'' and ''Moneycontrol,'' and owns various other assets and investments. The broadcasting subsidiary TV18 is the controlling partner in two mass media j ...
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Telugu Cinema
Telugu cinema, also known as Tollywood, is the segment of Indian cinema dedicated to the production of motion pictures in the Telugu language, widely spoken in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Telugu cinema is based in Film Nagar, Hyderabad, India. The nickname ''Tollywood'' is a portmanteau of the words Telugu and Hollywood. By 2021, it has emerged as the largest film industry in India in terms of box-office. Since 1909, filmmaker Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu was involved in producing short films and travelling to different regions in Asia to promote film work. In 1921, he produced the silent film, '' Bhishma Pratigna'', generally considered to be the first Telugu feature film, and hence, regarded as the ''Father of Telugu cinema''. In 1933, '' Sati Savitri'' directed by Chittajallu Pullayya received an honorary diploma at the 2nd Venice. Known for its big-ticket, and popular film genre catering to wider audience, works such as ''Pathala Bhairavi'' (1951) (only South ...
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Bhakta Prahlada (1932 Film)
''Bhakta Prahlada'' () is a 1932 Indian Telugu-language Hindu mythological film directed by H. M. Reddy and produced by Ardeshir Irani of Imperial Film Company. It features Sindhoori Krishna Rao as the titular Prahlada, along with Munipalle Subbiah, Surabhi Kamalabai, Doraswamy Naidu, Chitrapu Narasimha Rao, and L. V. Prasad. No complete synopsis of the film that is known to survive, but it is an adaptation of a play of the same name. Having achieved success in Hindi cinema by releasing India's first sound film ''Alam Ara'' in 1931, Irani wanted to expand his scope to South Indian cinema. ''Bhakta Prahlada'' was released on 6 February 1932, and was positively received by the audience but variedly by critics, who panned its resemblance to the stage version, poor sound recording, and low-quality images. The film has been considered the first sound film in Telugu cinema. It is now lost; surviving artefacts include a few stills, advertisements, and reviews. Plot The film is ...
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Cinema Of South India
The Cinema of South India refers collectively to the six distinct film industries based in Southern region of India namely Tamil, Telugu, Tulu, Kannada, Konkani, and Malayalam. Although these industries developed independently for a long period of time, gross exchange of artists and technicians, as well as globalisation helped in shaping this unique identity. By 2010, South India became the home for 6320, or about 62% of the 10,167 movie theatres in India. For the financial year of 2013, the combined net box office revenue of Tamil and Telugu films stood at nearly 40% of the total net revenue of Indian films. In 2020, the combined market of the Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam film industries grossed revenue of Rs 1,040 crore, and surpassed that of Hindi film markets where box office collection stood at Rs 870 crore. In 2021, Telugu film industry emerged as the largest film industry of India in terms of box office revenue. History During the Madras Presidency ...
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Cinema Of India
The Cinema of India consists of motion pictures produced in India, which had a large effect on world cinema since the late 20th century. Major centers of film production across the country include Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Kochi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar-Cuttack and Guwahati. For a number of years the Indian film industry has ranked first in the world in terms of annual film output. In terms of box office it ranked third in 2019, with total gross of around (US$2.7 billion). Indian cinema is composed of Multilingualism, multilingual and Multiculturalism, multi-ethnic film art. In 2019, Hindi cinema represented 44% of box office revenue, followed by Telugu cinema, Telugu and Tamil cinema, Tamil film industries, each representing 13%, Malayalam cinema, Malayalam and Kannada cinema, Kannada film industries, each representing 5%.Other prominent languages in the Indian film industry include Cinema of West Bengal, Bengali, Marathi cinema, Marathi, Cinema of O ...
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Cowman (profession)
A cowman is a person who works specifically with cattle. Usage Usage of the word "cowman" has significant geographic variation, though is sometimes used interchangeably with terms such as "stockman", "cattleman", "rancher" and "grazier." In England, where the word ''cowman'' originates, the social status of a cowman originally was a minor landowner, a yeoman, rather than a cowherd or herdsman. In medieval Gaelic Ireland a cowman was known as a bóaire and was landed. Today, however, in the British Isles the cowman usually is an employee, synonymous with cowherd. A highly skilled, superior cowman would be equivalent to an American farm or ranch manager, responsible for daily management of the herd. An ordinary cowman would be equivalent to a cowboy in the United States, or a stockman in Australia. A cowman with a dairy farm may also be known in the British Isles as a ''milkman''. In both the British Isles and the United States ''milkman'' commonly means someone who deliv ...
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Lost Film
A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection, public archive or the U.S. Library of Congress. Conditions During most of the 20th century, U.S. copyright law required at least one copy of every American film to be deposited at the Library of Congress at the time of copyright registration, but the Librarian of Congress was not required to retain those copies: "Under the provisions of the act of March 4, 1909, authority is granted for the return to the claimant of copyright of such copyright deposits as are not required by the Library." A report created by Library of Congress film historian and archivist David Pierce claims: * 75% of original silent-era films have perished. * 14% of the 10,919 silent films released by major studios exist in their original 35 mm or other formats. * 11% survive only in full-length foreign versions or film formats of lesser image quality. Of the American sound films made from 1927 to 1 ...
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Bankable Star
In the film industry, a bankable star is an actor (movie star) "capable of guaranteeing box-office success simply by showing up in a movie." The bankability of an actor includes their films' box office track record, professional demeanor, and other factors. Hiring a bankable star helps a film company to secure investment, distribution, and garner media attention. Some bankable stars have so much star power that even films without a strong concept or "hook", such as a star vehicle film, is feasible to make. A bankable director is a similar notion. Overview Media consultant Blake Harris states that a bankable star is one of the "3 minimum ingredients to any film package," the other two being a successful director and a script or a strong story idea. The involvement of a bankable star in a film gives investors confidence that they will achieve a return on their investments by ensuring that the film is widely distributed and that at least some people will pay to see it (that it wi ...
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Mahakavi Kalidas (1966 Film)
''Mahakavi Kalidas'' () is a 1966 Indian Tamil-language biographical film produced and directed by R. R. Chandran, starring Sivaji Ganesan. It is based on the life of the poet Kalidasa. The film was released on 19 August 1966. Plot Cast * Sivaji Ganesan as Chinnaiah / Kalidas * Sowcar Janaki as Princess Sangeetha Vani / Vilasavathi * R. Muthuraman as King Boja * L. Vijayalakshmi as Mohanangi * S. V. Sahasranamam (guest role) * R. S. Manohar as Ambarisan * V. K. Ramasamy as Konar * Nagesh as Oviyar (guest role) * A. Karunanidhi as Suppan * C. K. Saraswathi as Chinnaiah's mother * K. B. Sundarambal as Kali * E. R. Sahadevan as King * Usilaimani as Poet * Karuppu Subbiah as Poet * Karikol Raju as Barber * C. S. Pandian * S. V. Sivanandham * G. Sakunthala * M. S. Malathi * P. K. Vijayarani Soundtrack Music was composed by K. V. Mahadevan while the lyrics were penned by Kannadasan and Ku. Ma. Balasubramaniam. The "Sakunthalai" music drama was not included in the fi ...
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