Filmistan

Bombay-based studio; Est: 1943-44 leasing the former premises of the Sharda studio. Launched by major breakaway group from Bombay Talkies led by their production controller Rai Bahadur Chunilal and producer Shashadhar Mukherjee. Their first film was Gyan Mukherjee’s ​Chal Chal Re Naujawan (1944, with Ashok Kumar). The studio continued more or less from S. Mukherjee’s two influential Bombay Talkies productions: Naya Sansar (1941) and the colossal hit ​Kismet (1943). Its subsequent output elaborated these into the first consistent Filmistan 96 generic codification and regulation of a post- Independence All-India Film market-place. By the early 50s, the ‘ film factory’ (as [[B.R. Chopra]], who worked there briefly, called it) had revolutionised distribution with midbudget genre productions selling mainly on their star value and their music. The approach was exemplified by Gyan Mukherjee himself and extended by P.L. Santoshi, [[Subodh Mukherjee]], Nasir Hussain and Najam Naqvi, with stars Ashok Kumar, Dev Anand, [[Dilip Kumar]], ​Shammi Kapoor and [[Nalini Jaywant]], and music directors ​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._RamchandraC. Ramchandra and S.D. Burman. Following the hits Shaheed (1948), Shabnam (1949: establishing the famous star pair of Dilip Kumar and Kamini Kaushal and featuring Burman’s music) and Samadhi (1950), Filmistan’s style arguably had the largest impact of any studio on later independent commercial film-making in Hindi. This is evident e.g. in Manmohan Desai’s cinema. Other notable Filmistan cineastes are P.L. Santoshi, Nandlal Jaswantlal, [[Kishore Sahu]] and Ramesh Saigal. The studio yielded yet another mutation when Shashadhar Mukherjee moved out to start Filmalaya (1958).

Studio