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There is one country on this shrinking planet that has an annual output in feature motion picture production footage that is said to exceed that of the American film industry. This country is India. In spite of this quantity of film, most of us have never seen one of the many pictures made in this overpopulated and mystic land.
That fine picture that Jean Renoir made in India, "The River," and in which Eugene Lourie did such beautiful art direction, was really an American picture made on location in India.
Well, I had the opportunity this past summer to see first hand what the real Indian film industry is like and get to know a few of the people in it. I went to India with two very interesting assignments; one, I was to work directly with the all Indian motion picture company, Minerva Movietone Studios in Bombay. My job there was to be color adviser and ambassador extraordinaire without portfolio. My other job was to absorb and photograph as much of the Indian atmosphere as possible in preparation for designing the picture "Monsoon" for the independent American company. The Film Group, Inc. This little article deals only with my experiences with Minerva Movietone.
I flew all the way, stopping off in London just long enough to check with Mr. George Gunn of Technicolor of London for instructions. Twenty-two hours by air via Air India and we were over Bombay. It looked like any large city from the air (population ten million) and the outskirts of the city looked badly
flooded. I learned that this was to be expected at this time of the year, the monsoon season. It was hot and humid every day, about like a midsummer heat wave in New York City, and it rained some part of every day I was in India. Mr. Sorab Modi met me at the airport. He and his brother, Keki Modi, own Minerva Movietone and Central Studios in Bombay and a large chain of theatres throughout India. The following morning Sorab Modi and his Art Director, Mr. Rusi Banker, picked me up at the hotel and drove me to the studio.
The name of the picture I was to work on was "Jhansi ki Rani," which means in English "Queen of Jhansi." It is the dramatization of the life and tragic death of the Maharani of Jhansi. This was a part of the Indian Mutiny in 1857. The Rani was shot by British soldiers as she was leading her regiment in a suicidal charge during the siege of the fort at Jhansi, a small province in the west central part of India. The Indian does not speak of this battle as a "mutiny." To him it is the beginning of their own fight for independence, similar to our battle of Lexington and Concord, and the brave Rani of Jhansi is a national
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