Paul Zils

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Zils (born June 18, 1915 in what is now Wuppertal ; † March 30, 1979 in Munich ) was a German documentary filmmaker who was one of the most important representatives of Indian documentary film in the 1940s and 50s . He also made three feature films in the country. As in the case of Franz Osten , this work went almost unnoticed in Europe at the time.

Life

Zils started as an apprentice at Ufa in Berlin in 1933 and worked there as an author and film editor until 1938. In 1936/37 he was assistant director for three Paul Martin films . He then traveled to Africa and the USA, where he worked for Wilhelm Dieterle and Max Reinhardt from 1939 . He was able to win Paramount over to finance a film for him that he wanted to shoot in Bali . On May 10, 1940, he and other Germans were arrested by the British while filming and taken to a POW camp in Sumatra . A year later, the prisoners were transferred to a larger detention center in India ( Bihar ) as the Japanese were on the rise in Indonesia. Together with other talented camp inmates, Zils organized musical stage performances. After his release, because of his film experience, he was offered the leadership of the field service department at Information Films of India , a state-run documentary production company headed by Ezra Mir . At the end of October 1945 he came to Bombay and began his work. After the closure of Information Films of India, Zils went freelance and in 1948 founded his own company Documentary Films of India; Zils did not join the new state production company Films Division , which was created in 1949 . To popularize the documentary, he supported the quarterly Indian Documentary magazine published by Mulk Raj Anand , BK Karanjia , Vikram Sarabhai , Frene Talyarkhan and Jagmohan , among others . The magazine was discontinued after four issues, but Zils published it himself five years later by 1959.

From the late 1940s, Zils worked closely with the documentary filmmaker Fali Bilimoria , who assisted him with both camera and direction, or had an equal share in it. For some films of the 1940s, Zils was also supported by the experienced Indian documentary filmmaker PV Pathy . From 1950 to 1952, Zils tried his hand at filming and made three films with Dev Anand . He then turned back to documentary film. In the mid-1950s, the Burmah Shell Group invested in the production of documentaries and founded a film department (Shell Film Unit) based on the model of the British GPO Film Unit of the 1930s. Stuart Legg , head of the Shell Film Unit, appointed the Canadian James Beveridge , who had already worked under John Grierson on the National Film Board of Canada , as director in India . Zils and Harisadhan Dasgupta were commissioned with the productions . Loose series of films were made about the main branches of industry, crafts and the life of the indigenous people of India, which Zils produced and directed together with Bilimoria. From 1955, the leading Indian documentary filmmaker Sukhdev worked with them as an assistant in the 1960s and 70s , who later referred to Zils as his teacher.

For the film series Major Industries in India they created a 40-minute documentary about life and work in the steelworks town of Jamshedpur and films about the textile industry and agriculture. Among the productions of the series Life in India were A Village in Travancore (1956), The Martial Dances of Malabar (1958), Oraons of Bihar (1958) and The Vanishing Tribe (1958). A Village in Travancore showed the life of a family in Travancore in southern India (now in Kerala ). The film was awarded for Best Documentary at the 1957 Cork Film Festival . The jury chairman of the festival Basil Wright praised it in particular for its aesthetic quality, which, according to Zils, was a result of the artistic freedom given by Shell. The Vanishing Tribe portrays the Toda people living in the Nilgiris . Zils also showed the rituals and everyday life of this tribe using the example of a family. They are the indigenous inhabitants of the Nilgiris, but this ethnological study cannot clarify their origin.

Paul Zils was also active in filmmaking organizations. From 1957 to 1959 he was President of the Indian Documentary Producers Association (IDPA). In March 1959 he returned to Germany and worked in Munich for Deutsche Condor Film GmbH, for which he shot several educational films in India, where he could fall back on his old contacts with Bilimoria and others. In the mid-1960s he made some films about Buddhism in Ceylon , which were also used as educational films for school lessons.

Movies

Feature films

  • 1936: Glückskinder (assistant director)
  • 1937: Seven Slaps (Assistant Director)
  • 1937: Fanny Elßler (assistant director)
  • 1950: Hindustan Hamara
  • 1952: Zalzala
  • 1952: Shabash

Documentaries (selection)

  • 1945: Bombay - The Story of the Seven Isles
  • 1947: India's Struggle for National Shipping
  • 1948: Mother-Child-Community
  • 1949: A Nite with Stars
  • 1949: Kurvandi Road
  • 1949: White Magic
  • 1949: The Last Jewel
  • 1949: General Motors in India
  • 1949: A Tiny Thing Brings Death
  • 1949: Two Worlds
  • 1950: Our India
  • 1954: A Family in Bangalore
  • 1954: Ujala
  • 1955: Fisherfolk of Bombay
  • 1955: Major Industries of India: Agriculture
  • 1956: Major Industries of India: Textiles
  • 1956: The School
  • 1956: The Ripening Seed
  • 1956: A Village in Travancore
  • 1956: Major Industries of India: Iron and Steel
  • 1957: New Life of a Displaced Person
  • 1957: Maa - The Story of an Unwed Mother
  • 1957: Fifty Miles from Poona
  • 1958: The Vanishing Tribe
  • 1958: Oraons of Bihar
  • 1958: Martial Dances of Malabar
  • 1961: Jalgaon. A village in the Deccan (India)
  • 1962: On a tea plantation in Dardschiling
  • 1962: Rourkela - steel for India
  • 1963: Buddhism in Ceylon
  • 1963: Everything in Flow (short documentary film)
  • 1964: Faith and Life of the Hindus
  • without chronological classification:
    • Time and the Nation (Ceylon)
    • Training for Progress (Ceylon)

literature

Entry on Paul Zils in Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen: Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema , p. 240 f., 2nd edition, New Delhi 1999

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ PLANET INDIA - import model Heimatfilm
  2. ↑ http://www.beevision.com/JAB/father3.shtml
  3. ↑ http://www.beevision.com/JAB/father2.shtml
  4. ^ Entry on Sukhdev in Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, p. 223
  5. ↑ 2nd CORK FILM FESTIVAL ( Memento from September 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ BD Garga in "Cinema in India", Vol. I, No. 3, July-September 1987, pp. 34-37.
  7. ↑ THE INDIAN DOCUMENTARY (2) ( Memento from January 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Note: The listing of Indian documentaries follows the filmography in Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema and does not claim to be complete. The attribution of further titles, especially as a producer, is very likely. The films made for Deutsche Condor Film are certainly just as incomplete (see also the short list under Deutsche Condor Film GmbH. In: filmportal.de . Deutsches Filminstitut , accessed on October 7, 2016 ) .
  9. ^ BK Karanjia: Counting My Blessings , Penguin Books India, New Delhi 2005, ISBN 0670058491 , p. 117
  10. ↑ [1] (title at filmportal.de obviously wrong)
  11. ↑ Registration card with table of contents ( Memento from August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  12. ↑ Registration card with table of contents ( Memento from August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  13. ↑ INDIA / ROURKELA German victory
  14. ↑ Registration card with table of contents ( Memento from September 3, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  15. ↑ Registration card with table of contents ( Memento from September 3, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  16. ↑ Registration card with table of contents ( Memento from September 6, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Zils, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German documentary filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Wuppertal
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1979
Place of death Munich