Ardeshir Irani

Ardeshir Irani

Ardeshir Marwan Irani (born December 5, 1886 in Pune , † October 14, 1969 in Bombay , Maharashtra ) was an Indian film producer and director . Using his own distribution structure, he became one of the most influential early Indian film personalities.

biography

After a few small jobs, Irani entered his father's phonograph and instrument trade in Bombay. For Universal , he became their representative in the West Indies and thus came into contact with the film industry. With Abdulally Esoofally he took over the Alexandra and Majestic Theater in Bombay in 1914, and they had foreign as well as domestic films played on them. The collaboration with Esoofally worked for several decades. In 1920 Irani turned to film production in order to be able to supply its cinemas with sufficient new films. For this purpose he founded the Star Film company with Bhogilal KM Dave . In 1922 they published the large-scale production Veer Abhimanyu , a mythological story from the Mahabharata . 5000 people are said to have participated in the production of the film, which was directed by Manilal Joshi . The leading roles were played by Fatma Begum , the first Indian film director and producer, and her daughter Sultana .

In 1923, Irani founded Majestic Films and hired young directors Naval Gandhi and Bhagwati Prasad Mishra . As one of several Irani-Gandhi co-directors, the studio's most famous film, Paap No Fej , was made in 1924 . In 1925, Majestic Film became the equally short-lived company Royal Art Studios and in 1926 the large film company Imperial Films .

This developed into one of the largest film production companies for early Indian film . In 1931, Imperial Films directed Alam Ara, the first Indian sound film, under Irani's direction . During the sound film era, they produced films in nine different languages. Including Dukhtar-e-Lur (1933), the first sound film in Persian . Numerous actors started their careers with Imperial Films , including Prithviraj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan .

Irani remained an innovative film producer even in the second half of the 1930s, he obtained the necessary equipment for color film production and in 1937, Kisan Kanya, the first indigenous Indian color film, appeared in cinemas. However, the following year Imperial Films went bankrupt. After that, Ardeshir Irani only produced one film, Pujari (1946). However, he remained a member of the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association (IMPPA), whose first president he was in 1933.

literature

• Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Paul Willemen: Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema , p. 109

Web links

• Ardeshir Irani in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• biography