Bhagwan Das Garga

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Bhagwan Das Garga (often just BD Garga ; born November 14, 1924 in Lehra , Punjab , † July 18, 2011 in Patiala , Punjab ) was an Indian documentary filmmaker and film historian .

Life

Garga grew up in Lahore . He developed an interest in photography as a teenager. He was able to publish some of his photographs in the magazine "Illustrated Weekly of India". In 1943 he went to Bombay and worked in the Indian film industry for the director V. Shantaram , where he learned the film trade. He met the journalist and film critic KA Abbas , who encouraged him to write an article on the history of Indian cinema for Abbas' Urdu-language magazine “Sargam”. With that, Garga's film history writing activity began.

In 1948 Bhagwan Das Garga shot Storm over Kashmir, the first of more than 50 documentaries, which he wrote and produced himself. His interest in film led him to Europe in 1953, where he studied practical film work in the British Ealing Studios and made contacts with the British Film Institute and the Cinémathèque française . He had a lifelong friendship with Henri Langlois and after Langlois' death in 1977 he wrote the obituary in the magazine “ Filmfare ”, in which he praised him as the greatest patron of world cinema . During his five years in Europe, Garga also traveled to the Soviet Union and supported Abbas in the Mosfilm studios with the work on the Soviet-Indian film project Journey across three seas (1957). He also met with film historians and archivists.

Garga collected, researched and wrote about film all her life; his research on Indian film history resulted in the first film anthology on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Indian film. For UNESCO in 1967 Garga was a member of the expert commission on the history of international film. In 1969 he organized the first retrospective of Indian film at the Cinémathèque française. He was a member of the Film Advisory Board of India and a founding member of the National Film Archive of India in Pune . He has also published articles on various aspects of Indian cinema, for example in the NFDC magazine "Cinema in India". In 1988, on the 75th anniversary of Indian film, the Indian State Film Fund honored him with a prize for his contribution to the growth of the national film industry. Garga was a member of the jury of national and international film festivals.

In 1992 Garga moved from Bombay to Goa with his wife. At the Mumbai International Film Festival 1996 he received the V. Shantaram Award for his life's work in documentary film. For his book From Raj to Swaraj: The Non-Fiction Film in India on the history of Indian documentary film, he received a National Film Award for the best Indian book on film of 2007. Garga sold his unique private collection of around 3,000 film memorabilia shortly before his death to the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts in New Delhi for 20 million rupees . His last book, Silent Cinema in India: A Pictorial Journey , was published posthumously in 2012 and was also awarded the National Film Award.

Bibliography (selection)

  • The Present-Day Situation and Future Prospects of the Feature Film in India , Paris: UNESCO, 1961
  • Sound Track in the Indian Film , Paris: UNESCO, 1966
  • So Many Cinemas: The Motion Picture in India , 1996
  • The Art of Cinema: An Insider's Journey Through Fifty Years of Film History , 2005
  • From Raj to Swaraj: The Non-Fiction Film in India , 2007
  • Silent Cinema in India: A Pictorial Journey , 2012

Filmography (selection)

  • 1948: Storm over Kashmir
  • 1960: Family Planning - Why?
  • 1964: Creative Artists of India - Satyajit Ray
  • 1968: The Dance of Shiva (co-directed with Chidananda Dasgupta )
  • 1969: Creative Artists of India - Amrita Sher-Gil
  • 1975: Sarojini Naidu
  • 1978: It Is Indian, It Is Good
  • 1981: Bombay - A City at Stake
  • 1985: Writing Off the Raj
  • Mamallapuram

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Foreword: A Life in Cinema , p. Xi. In: BD Garga: The Art of Cinema: An Insider's Journey Through Fifty Years of Film History , Penguin Books India, 2005
  2. ^ Overseas Indian: Connecting India with its Diaspora. (No longer available online.) In: overseasindian.in. Archived from the original on May 22, 2010 ; accessed on January 2, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / overseasindian.in
  3. ↑ Garga's book on documentary films wins National Award ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / overseasindian.in
  4. ^ Silent Cinema in India: A Pictorial Journey - Fantomas. In: cargocollective.com. December 14, 2001, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  5. ↑ 60th National Film Awards for the year 2012 Announced. (No longer available online.) In: dff.nic.in. Archived from the original on June 8, 2014 ; accessed on January 2, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dff.nic.in
  6. ↑ FAMILY PLANNING - WHY? In: ftvdb.bfi.org.uk. Retrieved January 2, 2015 .
  7. ^ WD Routt: The Dance of Shiva In: Ethnomusicology. Volume 20, Number 1, 1976, p. 172.
  8. ↑ Leela Naidu: Leela. Penguin Books India, 2010, ISBN 978-0-670-99911-8 , p. 102. Limited preview in Google Book Search
  9. ^ Writing Off the Raj - Films Division. In: filmsdivision.org. September 1, 2012, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  10. ↑ MAMALLAPURAM. In: ftvdb.bfi.org.uk. Retrieved January 2, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Garga, Bhagwan Das
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Garga, BD
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian documentary filmmaker and film historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Lehra , Punjab
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 2011
Place of death Patiala , Punjab