Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, popular as Dadasaheb Phalke, was born on 30 April 1870, Google had made a Doodle to tribute the Bollywood legend, he was a great man who is called the ‘Father of the Indian film industry’. He was a creative artist trained from the School of Art. He was an experienced actor on stage, an amateur magician. The Art Bhavan also had a course of photography from Baroda. He also experimented with the photo-printing process. In the business of printing that he was engaged in, in 1910, one of his partners withdrew his financial support from him. At that time, he was 40 years old, his nature was flustered by the loss in business. He saw a movie made on ‘Isaamseeh’ on the occasion of Christmas. During the film, Phalke decided that his life was meant to be a filmmaker. They felt that legendary epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata would get good stories for films. They had all kinds of skills. He used to experiment with new ones. Therefore, by taking advantage of training and being the first person to perform the impossible task of making the first Indian movie due to his natural nature, he became the first person.
He bought a cheap camera in 5 pounds and studied and analyzed films in all the theaters of the city. Then using it for 20 hours a day. The effect of working from such a crazy life was on their health. One of his eyes went away At that time his wife Saraswati Bai supported them. Challenging social exclusion and social anger, he pledged his jewelry (40 years later, Satyajit Ray’s wife did the same work to make her debut film ‘Pather Panchali’). His only friend was his first critic. So, to prove his efficiency, he sowed peas in a pot. Then draw the process of moving it to one frame at a time and load it with a simple camera. For this, he used the technique of timepiece photography. By pledging his wife’s life insurance policy in this way, he was successful in getting a loan at a higher interest rate.
In February 1912, he went to England to do a crash-course in film production and learned to work under Cecil Hepworth for a week. Cabowne helped in electing Williamson camera, a film performer, processing and printing machine and raw materials. He made ‘Raja Harishchandra’. Since there were no other standards in that period, so all the improvisation arrangements had to be done by them themselves. Had to teach acting, have to write scenes, have to do photography and work for film projection. Due to lack of female artists, all their heroines were male artists (except for prostitute character). A male chef Salunke of the hotel played the role of the first heroine of Indian film. Initially, the shooting was made by setting up a studio in Dadar. All the shooting was done in the light of day because they developed exposed footage in the night and used to print (with the help of his wife). In six months 3700 feet long film is ready. This was released at the Olympia Cinema Hall on April 21, 1913. Not only the fanciful viewers of the western film, but the press also ignored it. But Phalke knew that he was making his film for the general public, so this movie was a huge hit.
Harishchandrachi Factory, a feature film in Marathi, on the production of Phalke’s filmmaking effort and the creation of the first film Raja Harishchandra, was created in 2009, which was appreciated by the country abroad.
