Jamshedji Framji Madan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jamshedji Framji Madan

Jamshedji Framji Madan (mostly JF Madan ; born April 27, 1857 in Bombay , † June 28, 1923 in Calcutta ) was an Indian businessman , theater owner and film producer and is considered a pioneer of early Indian film . He ran the first permanent film theater in India and was the first Indian to employ foreign film directors.

Life

Madan was born into a middle-class Bombay Parsees family. He dropped out of school after his father suffered major financial losses in the collapse of a bank investing in land reclamation to connect the seven islands of Bombay . From 1868 JF Madan worked in the prop at the "Elphinstone Dramatic Club", an amateur theater troupe founded in 1863 by students from Elphinstone College , and later also took on acting roles there, for example in 1873 in Nusserwanji Parekh's play Sulemani Shamsher . His brother Pestonji Madan also became an actor. Around 1875 Madan's ensemble worked professionally under the name "Elphinstone Natak Mandali" and performed throughout British India .

Madan left the theater company in 1882 and worked in the trade - for a short time in Karachi , from 1883 in Kolkata . There he was able to establish himself as a successful businessman. Among other things, he supplied army quarters all over India with goods and thus brought it to prosperity, which allowed him to buy the Corinthian Hall theater in Calcutta in the 1890s and to take over his old theater company. He had the Corinthian Theater in Kolkata and Parsee theater in Hindi, Urdu or Gujarati, and concerts of classical music were occasionally held there. In 1902 and 1904, recordings were made for "The Gramophone and Typewriter Company", which were among the first sound recordings in India. As in Kolkata's other large theaters - Classic Theater, Minerva Theater and Star Theater - short films were occasionally shown on Pathé equipment.

From 1902 Madan established his company headquarters in Kolkata and traded as "JF Madan & Sons", in addition he had branches in Lucknow and Darjiling . At the time he was active in several branches of business such as importing and wholesaling alcohol, food and pharmaceutical products, as well as insurance and real estate, each with a focus on the British in India. In 1905 he founded a hotel in Darjiling, where many British colonial officials and officers retired during the hot summer months. JF Madan's contacts with the colonial rulers were good; as a Freemason he was a member of the Yeatman-Biggs Lodge in Kolkata.

Some historians claim that Madan was staging Bioscope screenings in a tent on the Maidan in Kolkata as early as 1902 , but it is likely that he only came into serious contact with the film business in 1905 when he produced some documentaries by Jyotish Chandra Sarkar under the Elphinstone Bioscope company. In 1907 Madan opened the Elphinstone Picture Palace, which was the first permanent cinema in India. He had recognized the economic potential of the new medium and expanded the business by buying film equipment from Pathé and its agency founded in India the year before in 1908 . In addition to the distribution, Madan also invested in the production of news films based on Pathé's model. The first recordings of a soccer game in India were made under him in 1912. As early as the mid-1910s, several Madan movie theaters opened in all parts of British India, and in addition to topical films, mainly imported films were shown, especially for a British audience, including in Madras from 1914 . Another source of films were theater performances in Madan's houses, which were partially filmed and made available to a wider audience in movie theaters.

By the end of World War I, his company grew so rapidly that by 1918 he owned a third of all Indian cinemas. Most of these were located in residential areas of British and senior Indian officials and showed mostly imported productions from the US and UK. After Madan produced the first feature film in Kolkata with Satyavadi Raja Harishchandra in 1917 , Bilwamangal , which was directed by Rustomji Dotiwala and is often referred to as the first Bengali feature film , was released in 1919 . Through the success of these productions, Madan recognized that Indian films can also be profitable, and JF Madan & Sons became the joint stock company Madan Theaters Limited in 1919 , under which, in addition to film distribution and production, the "Elphinstone Theatrical Co." and Corinthian Theater were operated. The most famous employed authors included Aga Hashr Kashmiri and Narayan Prasad Betaab .

Madan wanted to counter the film scene, which is particularly active in Bombay and Kolhapur, with quality and quantity. In 1920 he engaged the Italian director Eugenio de Liguoro , who had already filmed oriental spectacles in his home country, and had him film the famous episode Nala and Damayanti from the epic Mahabharata with Jyotish Bannerjee on a large budget . Damayanti was played by the Anglo-Indian Patience Cooper , who was one of Madan's full-time actresses. Nala embodied Keki Adajania . The sets and direction of the film were well ahead of the usual Indian productions of the time. Liguoro, who can be considered the first foreign director in Indian film, shot another film with a mythological story for Madan in 1921 with Dhruva Charitra . At the same time as Liguoro, Camille Legrand - a former Pathé employee - was active as a director and actor in Madan productions, including Ratnavali (1922) with the leading actress Patience Cooper.

Jamshedji Frami Madan acquired the rights to some of the stories from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Rabindranath Tagore , but only saw the filming of Bankimchandras Bishabriksha (1922) during his lifetime . After Madan's death in 1923, his third son, Jeejeebhoy Jamshedji Madan (JJ Madan), who had also worked as a director since 1922 , became Managing Director of Madan Theaters. His other business went into the hands of his other children.

literature

  • Michael Kinnear: The Gramophone Company's First Indian Recordings, 1899-1908, pp. 17-20, Popular Prakashan, 2004, ISBN 8171547281

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael S. Kinnear: The Gramaphone Company's First Indian Recordings, 1899-1908 , 1994, p. 17
  2. ^ RK Verma: Filmography: Silent cinema, 1913-1934. 2000, p. 13
  3. ↑ PARSI COMMUNITIES ii. IN CALCUTTA - Encyclopaedia Iranica. In: iranicaonline.org . July 20, 2006, accessed January 10, 2015 .
  4. ^ Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Paul Willemen: Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema . P. 139
  5. ↑ Michael S. Kinnear: The Gramaphone Company's First Indian Recordings, 1899-1908 , 1994, p. 15
  6. ↑ Indian Cinema: The Platinum Touch Manujendra Bhanja. Archived from the original on February 13, 2010 ; accessed on January 10, 2015 .
  7. ↑ 'We Focus Mainly On The MICE Segment' ( Memento from August 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: expresshospitality.com
  8. ↑ 'Fortune' keeps smiling on queen of hills. In: itcportal.com. Archived from the original on March 8, 2008 ; accessed on January 10, 2015 .
  9. ^ ITC's subsidiary scores a century. In: thehindubusinessline.com. May 6, 2005, accessed January 10, 2015 .
  10. ↑ YWR Media Team Fast-Tracks PR ( Memento of 7 August 2008 in the Archives Internet ) In: freemasonrytoday.com
  11. ^ Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Paul Willemen: Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema , p. 139
  12. ^ History of Bengali Cinema. In: bfjaawards.com. Archived from the original on September 24, 2005 ; accessed on January 10, 2015 .
  13. ^ S. Muthiah: Cinema at Round Tana. In: thehindu.com. June 25, 2003, accessed January 10, 2015 .
  14. ↑ FROM MONOPOLY TO COMMODITY: THE BOMBAY STUDIOS IN THE 1930S ( Memento from September 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au
  15. ↑ Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Paul Willemen: Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema , p. 18
  16. ↑ also Bhagat Surdas
personal data
SURNAME Madan, Jamshedji Framji
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Madan, JF
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian businessman, theater owner, film producer and film pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Bombay
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 1923
Place of death Calcutta