Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke (Marathi: दादासाहेब फाळके) (April 30, 1870 - February 16, 1944) is known as the father of Indian cinema. Dadasaheb Phalke was born in Nasik. He joined Sir J.J. School of Arts, Bombay in 1885. After passing from J.J.School, Phalke went to the Kala Bhavan in Baroda where he learnt photography, printing and magic. He began his career as a small town photographer in Godhra but had to leave business after the death of his first wife and child in an outbreak of the bubonic plague. Persecuted, driven by from the city where he practiced the new art of photography (camera seen as life snatching lens), he went through a paranoia state for some time, during which he met the German magician Carl Hertz, one of the 40 magicians employed by the Lumiere Brothers. April 30 is the 120th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (121st in leap years), with 245 days remaining. ... 1870 (MDCCCLXX) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Monday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar. ... February 16 is the 47th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ... India is a major regional center for cinema. ... Nashik or Nasik is a city, and also a district and division, in Indias Maharashtra state. ... This article or section should be merged with Mumbai Mumbai (previously known as Bombay) is the worlds most populous conurbation, and is the sixth most populous agglomeration in the world. ... 1885 (MDCCCLXXXV) is a common year starting on Thursday. ... Vadodara, also known as Baroda, is the third-most populated town in Gujarat after Ahmedabad and Surat (the three towns with a population of over 1 million in Gujarat). ... Godhra is a town in Gujarat, India. ... Bubonic plague is the best-known variant of the deadly infectious disease plague, which is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis. ... The Lumière Brothers, Louis Jean (October 5, 1864–June 6, 1948) and Auguste Marie Louis Nicholas (October 19, 1862–April 10, 1954), were the creators of the cinematographic projector. ...

Soon after, he had the opportunity to work with the Archeological Survey of India as a draftsman. However, restless with his job and its constraints, and moved by the swadeshi and swaraj spirit, he turned to the business of printing. He specialized in lithography and oleography, and worked for Raja Ravi Varma, man producing the paintings that found homes across the country. He later started his own printing press, made his first trip abroad to Germany, to assimilate the latest technology and machinery and proved to be most successful at home as well as abroad, where his excellence received high praise. Negative lithography stone and positive print of a map of Munich. ... Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906) was an Indian painter who achieved recognition for his depiction of scenes from the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. ...

However, following a dispute with his partners about the running of the press, he gave up printing and turned his attention to the moving picture after his now-famous experience of watching a silent film The Life of Christ and envisioning Indian gods on the screen. He made his first film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1912; it was first shown publicly on May 3, 1913 at Bombay's Coronation Cinema, effectively marking the beginning of the Indian film industry. 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... May 3 is the 123rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (124th in leap years). ... 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ...

Once again, he proved successful in his new art, and proceeded to make several silent films, short, documentary feature, educational, comic, tapping all the potential of this (dynamic explosive) new medium.

However, the market that had opened up in the face of naked skepticism and against all odds, having proved its almost unlimited financial viability, soon attracted businessmen and money minded entrepreneurs who sacrificed the aesthetic and moral concerns of the new media on the altar of commerce. Phalke thought expedient to form a film company, Hindustan films in partnership with five businessmen from Bombay in the hope that by having the financial aspect of his profession handled by experts in the field, he would be free to pursue the idealistic nature of his calling. He set up a model studio and trained technicians, actors, but, very soon, as with his printing business he ran into insurmountable problems with his partners. Disgusted, disillusioned and despairing, Phalke resigned from Hindustan company, made his first announcement of retirement from cinema and retreated with his family to Kashi in 1920 where he wrote 'Rangbhoomi', a play. (‘Rangbhommi’ fetched him accolades and honors in the realm of theatre.)

But lacking his imaginative genius, the Hindustan company ran into deep financial loss, and he was finally persuaded to return. But it did not suit his temperament that he had to surrender his unique individual identity to the demands of meeting schedules and release dates and, after directing a few films for the company, he withdrew, content to train fresh directors, and to supervise the technical side of films production.

But then the times changed and Phalke fell victim to the very cause he had championed with such zeal and self sacrifice - the onward march of technology. Sound had arrived. Unable to cope with the talkie times, the man who had fathered the Indian film industry was engulfed by an image explosion that rendered him inert and paralyzed. His own creation haunted him, mute, he fled into fragmented memories of his pre-cinema, magic lantern days, his children unaware of the tragedy of his life and excited and enthralled by a promise for the future, fantasizing with the adventures of the new silver screen god.During 1936-38, he made his last film 'gangavataran'.

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was instituted in his honour. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is an annual award given by the Indian government for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema. ...

Selected filmography

• Raja Harishchandra (1913)
• Shri Krishna Janma (1918)
• Kaliya Mardan (1919)
• Setu Bandhan (1923)
• Gangavataran (1937)

Raja Harishchandra is a 1913 silent Indian film directed by Dadasaheb Phalke, based on a story from the Mahabharata. ...

External links

• Dadasaheb Phalke at the Internet Movie Database
• Dadasaheb Phalke @ SPICE