'''Imperial Films Company''' Est: 1926. Successor to the Majestic and Royal Art Film companies set up by [[Ardeshir Irani]] as a diversification of his exhibition interests in partnership with [[Esoofally]], Mohammed Ali and Dawoodji Rangwala. Organised as a vertically integrated combine with its own exhibition infrastructure. Started following the decline of [[Kohinoor]], it continued many of the latter’s [[Mohanlal Dave]]-inspired genres, often with the same stars and film-makers. Imperial became closely associated with the costumed historical genre launched with Anarkali (1928), shot and released almost overnight in direct competition to [[Charu Roy]]’s [[The Loves of a Mughal Prince]] (1928). Irani also rushed out [[Alam Ara]] (1931), released as India’s first full talkie narrowly beating [[Madan Theatres]]’ [[Shirin Farhad]] (1931). Imperial was the first studio to shoot scenes at night (in Khwab-e- Hasti, 1929) using incandescent lamps. It owned India’s top silent star, [[Sulochana]], and promoted her along with [[Zubeida]], Jilloo and, for a while, the young [[Prithviraj Kapoor]]. This was perhaps the first major instance of a deliberate manufacturing of a star-cult as a marketing strategy. Top Imperial film-makers include [[R.S. Choudhury]], [[B.P. Mishra]] and [[Mohan Bhavnani]], whose film-making set the house style, as did [[Nandlal Jaswantlal]]’s sound films. A fair number of the studio’s talkies were remakes of its own silent hits with Sulochana (Anarkali, 1928 & 1935), [[Wildcat of Bombay]] (1927) became [[Bambai Ki Billi]] (1936), etc. It made films in at least nine languages: Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Burmese, Malay, Pushtu and Urdu. The first Iranian sound film, Dukhtar-e-Lur (aka Dokhtare Lor Ya Irane Diruz Va Emruz, 1932) was also made here. [[Kisan Kanya ]](1937) by [[Gidwani]] was India’s first indigenously manufactured colour film, made with the Cinecolour process. When it closed in 1938, its economic and generic inheritance was continued by [[Sagar]] Movietone. [[Studio]]