The Power of Moving Image: An Extract from Filmi Jagat

“...a longing for a pure-world-to-come, now made more palpable and easily available across the counter of box offices in cinema halls. If one was carried away by the intensity of the gaze inside cinema halls and lived in its trance after the film was over, then the friendly neighbourhood film magazine was ever present, offering up its stills and allowing one to live in the presence of that gaze forever...”

- Kaushik Bhaumik, Filmi Jagat: A Scrapbook 

Filmi Jagat: A Scrapbook (Shared Universe of Early Hindi Cinema) was published by Niyogi Books in 2014 and presents the dynamic contours of graphic authorship by an elusive compiler, Mangaldas V. Lohana. Featuring film magazines, song booklets and advertisements produced between the 1930s–40s, the scrapbook presents a visual autobiography through insightful composites of cinema's print history from the Talkies era. 

Authored in the lead by Kaushik Bhaumik and Debashree Mukherjee, the publication contains a Foreword by renowned filmmaker and screenwriter, Shyam Benegal, who states, 

“Filmi Jagat is not merely a nostalgic ode to yesterday's passionate style or voice, but the intuitive and creative acumen of the compiler who stands for the general viewer in the era of Early Talkies, mesmerised by the power of moving image (and their stills), to interpret socio political events.”

Extracting images specifically from the first essay by Kaushik Bhaumik titled “Filmi Nationalism,” the author draws our attention to how certain image juxtapositions and sequences formulate a nationalistic discourse and idealist gaze through filmic and extra-filmic content, particularly through the visualisation of women. Bhaumik then highlights how the coming of lithography enabled such material to be “cut-out” from magazines and then recomposed by the everyday reader/viewer (i.e., Lohana), who would re-calibrate and illustrate their own sensibilities of devotion and spirituality, recomposing cinematic “moments” into new montages of an imaginary universe. For instance, one spread showcased:

“...an image of the reformer Lakhmidas Rowji Tairsee who had passed away in 1939. And then there are the stills from films of national uplift that were the order of social reformist cinematic fare being churned out in large numbers by the Bombay studios during this period—Bombay Talkies’ Naya Sansar, Hindustan Cinetone’s Apni Nagariya, the reformist comedy Kunwara Baap and an adaptation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection called Yeh Duniya kya Hai? amongst others...”

All images and captions from Filmi Jagat: A Scrapbook (Shared Universe of Early Hindi Cinema) by Kaushik Bhaumik, Debashree Mukherjee and Rahaab Allana. New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2014. Cover image by Rajiv Gautam. 

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