1938: Key Events

• The Haripura Congress is marked by ideological rifts between the Right and the Left factions of Congress; it also exhibits Nandalal Bose’s famous Haripura posters, showing India’s working people and evoking Pat figurations and reliefs from Bengal’s terracotta temples.

• The modernist sculptor Ram Kinker Baij makes his monumental Santhal Family cement sculpture at Shantiniketan.

• K. M. Munshi? starts the Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan.

• Short-wave radio broadcasts are introduced.

• Veer Savarkar becomes president of the Hindu Mahasabha.

• Duniya Na Mane? is shown in Venice; none of the four Indian films shown in Venice in the 30s were bought for Western distribution.

• Bombay Talkies makes what is probably the first officially commissioned advertising film, on Lever’s Dalda cooking oil, for the Lintas advertising agency (although Niranjan Pal is supposed to have made some ads in the early 30s).

• The South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce and the Indian Motion Picture Distributors’ Association (IMPDA) are set up.

• The silver jubilee of the Indian film industry (usually dated from Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra?) is celebrated with ‘official’ versions of India’s film history.

• The first Malayalam sound feature: Balan. T

• The Indian Screen Gazette is started by Wadia Movietone?, sponsored by the Film Advisory Board

• P. V. Pathy films a three-reeler on the Haripura Congress for the Gazette.