Birendra Nath Sircar

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Birendra Nath Sircar (often BN Sircar , Birendranath Sircar ; Bengali : বিরেন্দ্র নাথ সরকার , Birendra Nāth Sarkār or বি এন সরকার ; * July 5, 1901 in Bhagalpur ; † November 28, 1980 in Calcutta ) was an Indian film producer and official.

Life

Birendra Nath Sircar was born the second son of Sir Nripendra Nath Sircar, Advocate General of Undivided Bengal and a member of the Viceroy's Council . He studied civil engineering at London University and after graduating there worked for "Martin Burn & Company". By supervising the construction of movie theaters in 1928/29, he became interested in the film business and gave up his job.

He had his own cinema "Chitra" (later renamed "Mitra") built in northern Kolkata, which was opened in December 1930 by Subhash Chandra Bose . In 1931 he took over the management of another cinema in Howrah , which he converted into a sound film cinema . His third cinema, called "New Cinema", in which only Hindi films were shown, he built in 1932 in the center of Kolkata. He also owned film projection facilities in Burdwan , Benares and Shillong .

In 1930 Sircar founded the production company "International Filmcraft", under whose name he produced two silent films by his co-partners Prafulla Roy and Charu Roy . With the start of the sound film era in India, he opened his studio in the south Kolkata district of Tollygunj in early 1931 and renamed his company " New Theaters ". In the 24 years of its existence, around 150 films were made, some of which were also made in Hindi or Tamil language versions in order to serve markets outside of Bengal. Although the focus was on making a profit, Sircar attached great importance to having high-quality material on socially critical topics as well as literature by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay , Rabindranath Thakur or Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay filmed. In addition to promoting talented filmmakers such as Premankur Atorthy , PC Barua , Bimal Roy , Debaki Bose , Phani Majumdar , Timir Baran , Nitin Bose , KL Saigal , Pankaj Mullick , Sisir Bhaduri , Amar Mullick , RC Boral , KC Dey , Durgadas Bannerjee , Sailajananda Mukherjee , Jiban Ganguly , Sushil Majumdar , Pahadi Sanyal , Prithviraj Kapoor , Kanan Devi , Chandrabati Devi , Dhiren Ganguly , Jamuna Barua or Chhabi Biswas , one of Sircar's achievements was the introduction of playback singing in Indian films in Nitin Bose's Bhagya Chakra / Dhoop Chakra (Bengali / Dhoop Chhaon Hindi, 1935).

After the New Theaters Studios closed in 1955, Sircar withdrew from the film business, but continued to work as a functionary in several film organizations. Among other things, he was President of the Bengal Motion Picture Association, President of the Film Federation of India, a member of the Central Board of Film Censors (from 1951) and the Film Finance Corporation (from 1960) and a founding member of the Children's Film Society (1955).

In 1971 Birendra Nath Sircar was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award and in 1972 the Padma Bhushan .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ RK Verma: Filmography: Silent Cinema, 1913-1934. M. Verma, 2000, p. 263. limited preview in Google book search
  2. ↑ Sharmistha Gooptu: The Glory that Was: An Exploration of the Iconicity of New Theaters. ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2011 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. (pdf; 193 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / cssaame.com
  3. ↑ Dadasaheb Phalke Award ( Memento from May 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Indian Cinema: The Platinum Touch ( Memento of February 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ http://www.cinemaya.net/press/8/pr2.pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.cinemaya.net  

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personal data
SURNAME Sircar, Birendra Nath
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sircar, Birendranath; BN Sircar, BN Sarkar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian film producer and film official
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Bhagalpur
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1980
Place of death Calcutta