'''Kohinoor Film Company'''


Est: 1919. India’s largest and most influential
silent studio. Preceded by S.N. Patankar’s
Patankar Friends & Co., where Kohinoor
proprietor D.N. Sampat (1884-1958) entered
film production, and followed by the Krishna,
Sharda and Imperial Studios, it was until 1928
the place where Indian cinema turned
professional. Launched in partnership with
Maneklal Patel, then an Ahmedabad exhibitor,
some of the studio’s first films were
documentaries informed mainly by Sampat’s
Gandhian adherences, e.g. the film of the Ali
brothers’ arrival (1920) and Horniman’s return
to Bombay after release from prison (1925).
Also known in this period for topicals and
newsreels, incl. e.g. Bodhgaya-Benares, Taj
Mahal and St. Xavier’s Exposition. Early
Kanjibhai Rathod films were restricted to
Bombay and Western Indian exhibition outlets
but the studio made a national impact in the
wake of the notoriety generated by the
banning of the nationalist Bhakta Vidur
(1921), followed by the success of Gul-e-
Bakavali and Kala Naag (both 1924), all
aimed at a pan-Indian audience. The big
breakthrough was the appointment of
independent distribution agents, Bachubhai
Bhagubhai, who bought rights to all their films.
By 1925 the studio’s monthly booking revenue
exceeded Rs 50,000. The idea of the
Hollywood-style film factory with several
simultaneous productions, of story sessions
and the building of star careers, transformed
the production practices of the till then
Phalke-dominated notion of a studio as a
family-based cottage industry. Early
cameramen incl. V.B. Joshi and D.D. Dabke.
Although Kohinoor’s surviving publicity
pamphlets indicate only one overdetermining
authorial presence, writer Mohanlal Dave
(until Manilal Joshi shifted the practice by
writing his own screenplays and giving a full
list of credits, even the actors were rarely
mentioned and almost never the director), it
was nevertheless the place where the star
system was born with Moti and Jamna and
where the silent cinema’s most successful filmmaker,
Homi Master, did his best-known
films. Tara, Khalil, Raja Sandow and Zubeida
started there, as did Sulochana in Bhavnani’s
Veer Bala (1925). Other major Kohinoor figures
include Chimanlal Luhar, Harshadrai
Mehta, cameraman Pandurang Naik, Gohar,
V.M. Vyas, Haribhai Desai (later of Surya Film)
and Ranjit proprietor Chandulal Shah.
Virtually the entire Imperial stable of directors,
including R.S. Choudhury, Bhavnani,
Nandlal Jaswantlal and R.N. Vaidya came
from Kohinoor. After a fire virtually destroyed
the studio in 1923, Maneklal Patel pulled out to
start Krishna, and after 1928 Devare was
mostly responsible for the studio’s new
incarnation as the employee-run co-operative
venture Kohinoor United Artists. A key figure
in the studio’s later years was cameramandirector
N.G. Devare. It closed in 1932.

[[Studio]]