The East India Film Company was an Indian film

production company A production company, production house, production studio, or a production team is a studio that creates works in the fields of performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, comics, interactive arts, video games, websites, music, and v ...

, based in

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

Bengal Presidency The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and ...

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

. It was the first Indian film company to screen a movie at an international

film festival A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upo ...

. Started in 1932 in Calcutta, by R. L. Khemka, it went on to be a pioneer in producing films across the several regional film industries, including

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Telugu, and Tamil, in the decade after its founding; till then, production companies were restricted regionally.

History

The company was formed in 1932 by R. L. Khemka, a local Marwari businessman in

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

, after acquiring the

RCA Photophone RCA Photophone was the trade name given to one of four major competing technologies that emerged in the American film industry in the late 1920s for synchronizing electrically recorded audio to a motion picture image. RCA Photophone was an opt ...

studio, its location recording equipment, and its

Mitchell Camera Mitchell Camera Corporation was a motion picture camera manufacturing company established in Los Angeles in 1919. It was a primary supplier of newsreel and movie cameras for decades, until its closure in 1979. History The Mitchell Camera Corpor ...

s. In 1933, East India Film Company's first Bengali film production, ''Jamuna Puline'', was released, with Priyanath Ganguli as the director after he left the

Madan Theatre Madan Theatre Company, also known as Madan Theatres Limited or Madan Theatres in short, was a film production company founded by Jamshedji Framji Madan, one of the pioneers of Indian Cinema. History Madan, a young Parsi businessman, who had expe ...

. Riding on its success, the company became the first

i studio to venture into not just

Hindi films Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...

, but also various films in South Indian languages. East India Film Company was soon producing a dozen movie releases per year, including several hits like ''Savithri'' (Telugu) and ''Ramayan'' (Tamil). The East India Film Company's '' Seeta'', made by

Debaki Bose Debaki Bose (1898–1971), also known as Debaki Kumar Bose, was an Indian director, writer, and actor who is recognized for his contribution in Hindi as well as Bengali cinema. He was born on 25 November 1898 in Akalposh, (now East Burdwan), Bu ...

, was the first

talkie A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...

shown in an international film festival when it was shown in 1934 at the

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival h ...

, where it won an honorary diploma. Subsequently, Bose also made his noted film, ''Sonar Sansar'' (Hindi: Sunhera Sansar) in 1936 under the East India Film Company banner. Shot in

on a lavish budget of Rs.75,000, East India Film Company's '' Sati Savithri'' in Telugu was a huge hit. Based on a popular stage play by Mylavaram Bala Bharathi Samajam, the film was directed by debutant C. Pullaiah and starred stage stalwarts Vemuri Gaggaiah and Dasari Ramathilakam as Yama and Savithri, respectively. Like ''Seeta'', this film was also shown in

, where it too won an honorary diploma.

Filmography

* ''Vara Vikrayam'' (1939) * ''Anasuya'' (1936) * ''Leyli o Majnun'' (1936) *'' Sunehra Sansar'' (1936) *'' Baghi Sipahi'' (1936) *''Murderer'' (1935) *'' Selima'' (1935) *'' Step Mother'' (1935) *'' Chandragupta'' (1934) *'' Kismet Ki Kasauti'' (1934) *'' Night Bird'' (1934) *'' Seeta'' (1934) *'' Sultana'' (1934) *'' Aurat Ka Pyar'' (1933) *'' King for a Day'' (1933) *'' Nala Damyanti'' (1933) *''Radha Krishna'' (1933) *'' Savithri'' (1933) *''Jamuna Puline'' (1933)

References

{{Authority control Film production companies based in Kolkata Mass media companies established in 1932 Cinema of Bengal Telugu cinema Indian companies established in 1932