1100+ Indian films made before 1931: How many still exist?

Most of the 1,138 silent films made between 1912 and 1931 do not exist anymore. The state-run film institute in Pune has managed to archive 29 of these films. Prints and negatives have been found dumped in shops, homes, basements, warehouses ...

The negative of a 2009 film called Magadheera made by SS Rajamouli "disappeared in just six years", according to the director. As Dungarpur tells the grim story, only 29 of 1,138 silent films made in India survive.

But Phalke’s Nasik studio was ... over the world. During the Silent Era (1896 – 1930) over a thousand films were made in India; however, only ten of them survive, now restored and preserved in the Pune archives....

More than 1000 production organisations operate in the Indian film industry, but few are successful. AVM Productions is the oldest surviving studio in India.

The Wrestlers (1899), by H. S. Bhatavdekar, showing a wrestling match at the Hanging Gardens in Bombay, was the first film to be shot by an Indian and the first Indian documentary film. From 1913 to 1931, all the movies made in India were silent films, which had no sound and had intertitles.

For example, roughly 200 out of over 500 Méliès films and 350 out of over 1,000 of Alice Guy's films survive. Of the roughly 1,100 films made in India between 1912 and 1931, only 29 are known to have survived.

cinema art films, with several of its filmmakers gaining international acclaim, most ... Madan Theatre Production of Jamai Shasthi was the first Bengali talkie . A long history · has been traversed since then, with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and · Ritwik Ghatak and others having earned international acclaim and securing their place ... Shasthi, released in 1931.

to 1913, when the first Indian film directed by Raja Harishchandra was released. The producer of the movie, Dadasaheb Phalke, was India's first movie boss. Unlike Hollywood, Bollywood initially grew slowly as an ... Several new manufacturing companies emerged from the early 1920s. At the time, most movies were based on · mythological or historical stories. Then came the movie Alam Ara, which was released in 1931...

And while in the west some 80% of silent films are thought lost, in India that figure is nearer 99%, with perhaps only a few dozen of the 1300 or so silent films made between 1899 and 1931 surviving, and then often only in fragments or as poor ...