FilmIndia (1946)

lune, 1946 Anwar Mirza and Tripti Bahaduri make a rare team in a rare picture, "Dharti Ke Lai" produced and directed by K. A. Abbas. provoked the jealousies of others who have plenty of blaekmarket money to burn. We are therefore destined to have more labs before the year ends and let us warn you rightaway that all of them will be turning out bad work with a consistency that will shock many. Add to these general labs the processing plants which some studios maintain independently. Except the Prabhat Studios, not a single other studio can Bairn to have done good processing work though quite a few studios have up-to-date processing equipment. The general inefficiency prevalent in the processing department of our industry is so damnably apparent that as an industry we have not the least chance of ever producing a technically perfect picture. Instead of having more such Dhobie Ghats, can't we possibly run our present laboratories on a more sensible and scientific standard, than we have done, hitherto, to give our industry some quality which it has not had for years? Just at present the processing technicians are paying with their reputations for the greed of the lab owners. How long are we to continue such an apathetic state of affairs? SLANDERING INSURANCE BUSINESS Of all the industries in the country, our film FILMINDIA industry is perhaps the most irresponsible business conducted by a group of evidently irresponsible and uneducated persons. Little realizing the fact that the film happens to be a terrific medium of propaganda by virtue of its triple appeal to the eye, to the ear and to the heart, our film people often portray glaring distortions of life which must leave behind distorted impressions on all spectators. Recently, the Navyug Chitrapat Ltd., slandered the profession of a film producer in their film "Din Raat" and bluffed their way out when the Association of producers called upon them to delete the offensive portions from the film. Men who don't mind spitting on their own bread before eating it are not expected to have consideration or sympathy for others. The least we can say is that there is very little character or purpose in the motion picture work that is at present done in our country. But other people in the country must take serious notice of the conduct of our film industry especially when such conduct is likely to affect the popularity and stability of our other national industries. After all a nation doesn't merely live by the film industry which only provides entertainment and that usually rotten. Of late we have seen a tendency amongst our film producers to give distorted impressions about our insurance business by caricaturing people in the insurance trade. Producer-director Jayant Desai, who has precious little general education and probably knows nothing of the national importance of the insurance business in the economic stability of a country, has put a sequence in his recent picture, "Tadbir", in which the office of some "Philipine Insurance Co." is shown as closed and its business liquidated when a minor boy goes to collect on his educational policy. Besides the whole procedure being technically wrong, as no insurance company can go into liquidation without the official liquidator taking control of affairs and meeting all liabilities at least partly, the producer should have known that a company with that name could only be an American concern and not one American insurance company has yet gone into liquidation since the insurance business began. In another picture, "Dhamki", produced under the patronage of Dalsukh Pancholi, Punjab's leading film magnate, the villain is none else than the Managing Director of the "Reliable Insurance Company", who operates an insurance racket of insuring people and killing them afterwards to collect the money. These types of grotesque and distorted portrayals of our insurance business people are bound to leave behind a very dangerous impression on the 13