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November, 1940
FILM INDIA
INDIAN PRODUCERS SHOULD BE ASHAMED.
I am afraid we Indians are a lot to blame. I just completed a tour of Syria. Lebanon and Turkey and the ignorance in these countries about Tndia and Indians is unforgivable. They still think that in Bombay one encounters tigers after dusk and that it is fatal to drink water as you would immediately get some disease. All the knowledge they have derived of India is by seeing pictures like "Ganga Din', 'Drum', and India Speaks.'
An educated Turkish lady asked me when I was at Istanbul if our women cry when they are burned to death. And when I looked askance she asked me, "Is it not a fact that when the husband dies his wife is also burnt with him?'' When I inquired where she got that from, she replied. "Oh I saw it in a picture 'India Speaks'." This is what these pictures do for us in a foreign country.
Why can't India produce propaganda pictures? Short reel subjects of "Modern India"! Why always show fakirs squatting on nails or hanging by their feet or bathing in the Ganges? Can't we show "Magic Carpets" of India showing, Bombay, Calcutta. Madras, the modern part of it and some of our big industries, our dockst our boy sccuts and girl guides, our armies, our big hotels and restaurants and our palatial buildings and beautiful roads?
There are over 20 big producers in India and if each of them were to produce one reel a year on these lines and send it out all over the world FREE with commentary in different languages they would do a real service to India, much better service than spinning with a Charkha or wearing Gandhi caps in mere protest.
INGRATITUDE OF IRAQIS
To think that on the Iraqi soil
the Indian blood was once shed to drive the Turks out so that an Iraqi can call to-day an Indian "Hindi Asvat" (Black Indian)! Could ingratitude go further? Every Indian has been gradually removed from the railways, electric companies, banks etc., and now there are hardly a dozen Indians in service here. In Turkey, the Indians are even ashamed to be known as Indians. I met one Mohammad Said from Punjab working in the French Embassy who has become a naturalised Turk. He says if the people knew him as an Indian they would laugh at him and so he prefers not to let any one know he is an Indian.
I have written this because I have been feeling for the gross injustice which is being done to India and Indians in this country. I write this in the full hope that "filmindia" will take up this matter with the same missionary zeal with which it agitated against Anti-Indian films through 1938 and 1939.
COMING SHORTLY
GREATEST THRILL DRAMA £k MYSTERY
Costume Picture
PARAMOUNT
MOVIETONE'S Cfreatesi ^Box Office 3~Eik
A SERIO-COMIC THRILLER
of
the Year
OF THE
MAGIC WORLD
mERERflJfl SHEiKHCHflbbl
SUPERVISION:
SJT. KiKUBHAI B. DESAI
DIRECTION:
T. S. M A N I
or
Ghanchakkar
DIRECTION:
SJT. KIKUBHAI B. DESAI
STARRING: SHANKER VAZRE
M O T I KANTA KUMARI
BOSE, A L I, DHULIA, PURI, GANPAT, ANVARI.
BOOKING
PARAMOUNT FILM GO,
Parekh Street BOMBAY 4.
STARRING:
NAVINCHANDRA M O T I
VASANT PAHELVAN DHULIA and others.
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