Cinema
Bilwamangal
বিল্বমঙ্গল
Rustomji Dhotiwala · 1919
Synopsis
The film follows Bilwamangal, a devotee of Krishna whom legend identifies with the poet Surdas, in the part of his life that precedes his devotion: a man whose affair with the courtesan Chintamani, the temptress, leads him to ruin. Dorabji Mewawala plays the hero and the stage actress Miss Gohar plays Chintamani; the surviving fragment shows in particular the hero's quarrel with his father.
Context
The film, based on a story by the Gujarati writer Champshi Udeshi, was released on 1 November 1919 at the Cornwallis Theatre in Calcutta, on twelve thousand feet of film, with intertitles in Bengali. Long thought lost, it survived in a nitrate print at the Cinémathèque française: in 2016 the national film archives of India received from it a digital copy of 594 metres, twenty-eight minutes, in exchange for the silent film Jamai Babu.
Who it is for
Twenty-eight silent minutes survive out of more than two hours originally, to be viewed as a document.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first fiction feature film of Bengali cinema, and the only visible survivor of the silent films of the Madan company.
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