Nandini Guha
KOlkata: To celebrate the long and illustrious journey of Bengali cinema, stalwarts like Goutam Ghose, Prosenjit Chatterjee and Ranjit Mullick have come together to formulate a year-long series of programmes, thanks to the initiative of Asha Audio.
The platform "Bangla Cinema 100" was launched on Wednesday by Chatterjee and other doyens of the Bengali film industry. The logo, website and social media platform were launched on Thursday. The celebrations will end on March 24, 2019.
The history of cinema in Bengal dates back to the 1920s, when the first "bioscopes" were shown in theatres here. Within a decade, the first seeds of the industry were sown by Hiralal Sen, considered a stalwart of Victorian era cinema when he set up the Royal Bioscope Company, producing scenes from the stage productions of a number of popular shows at the Star Theatre, Minerva Theatre, Classic Theatre. The first Bengali film was Satyabadi Raja Harishchandra which was released in 1917.
Following a long gap after Sen's works, Dhirendra Nath Ganguly established the Indo-British Film Company, the first Bengali-owned production company in 1918. However, the first Bengali feature film, Billwamangal, was produced in 1919 under the banner of Madan Theatre. Bilat Ferat was the IBFC's first production in 1921. The Madan Theatre production of Jamai Shashthi was the first Bengali talkie.
A long path has been traversed since then with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak earning international acclaim and securing their place of pride in the history of movies.