Filming Shalom Bollywood

This blog post was first published on my other blog, http://mydelayedreactions.blogspot.com/ in May 2010. Since then, I've visited India for the first time, and am starting work on a longer piece of writing involving my great-grandfather.

As well as all the excitement of 'Centuries of Skin' coming out, I've also been involved in a very interesting project.
I've been interviewed and have read a poem for a documentary film, 'Shalom Bollywood'. Many of India's early Bollywood pioneers and stars were Indian Jews, a part of Jewish and Indian heritage that not many people know about.
The documentary is being made by Danny Ben-Moshe, a filmmaker and academic, for his film company Identity Films. http://www.identity-films.com/about.html He has been flying all over the world, interviewing descendants of these Bollywood Jews.

This is a link to a clip of the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO03CbwZHhw

I was delighted to have been invited to talk about my great-grandfather's achievements for the film, especially 'Alam Ara' and am really looking forward to seeing it. Thanks, Danny, and good luck with the funding.

I will put more info on this blog about release dates, etc, nearer the time.

This is the poem I read, for my great-grandfather Joseph David Penkar, a Bollywood scriptwriter, director, producer, songwriter, and also playwright.

For Joseph David

This book-lined room is backdrop
for your modest gaze. Photographed
without your furry Russian hat- Dad remembers
how you wore it through the heat and dust.
Did you take it off, close the shutters
at mid-day to write, could you hear

your audience applaud from market stalls,
rickshaws, your mind flickering
past the reels of languages you spoke,
the silhouettes of stories, waves of ragaas?
You wrote as if the silver screen
was big enough to hold a world

where your descendants would scatter -
England, Ahmedabad, Israel, Canada.

Hooray for Bollywood article reprinted

Hooray for Bollywood:

About Joseph David, the Bene Israel Jew who wrote and produced the first talkie in Bollywood.                           

India has a thriving film industry. For example, Bengal (the home of Satyajit Ray's famous films, such as the trilogy starting with The World of Apu); South India, especially Kerala; Maharashtra State, Rajasthan and the Punjab all have their own large, thriving film industries. Bollywood, however is the best-known aspect of it in the West, and seems to be the most popular among the Indian expatriate community.

Bollywood is centred in Bombay, or as it now is, Mumbai, (perhaps now it should be called Mollywood,) and churns out about 800 films a year in 12 languages. Financed by interest rates of 40 to 60 percent and with a dozen-odd studios working round the clock, producing several films at any one time, all in the same studios, as well as some of the stars working on up to ten films simultaneously, ''churn'' seems to be the operative word. Clearly it is not a place for painstaking method-actors or -actresses.

In the first talkie in Hollywood, a Jew, Al Jolson, merely starred in it, but in the Indian film industry's first talkie, Joseph David (DE’s grandfather), wrote the story, the music and co-produced it.

The film Alam Ara is a swashbuckling tale about a power-struggle between two queens of an ageing king, and the daughter of an imprisoned loyal general, the Alam Ara of the title. It was based on Joseph David's popular play written in Persian, and performed by his Parsee Theatrical Theatre Company and produced by Wadia Movietone. According to The Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, "Alam Ara established the use of music, song and dance as the mainstay of Indian cinema."

He went on to write and co-produce many other films for Wadia Movietone, including a series of  stunt movies, the first being Hunterwali, (The Lady with the Whip), about a super-heroine, the Indian equivalent of the superheroes and heroines, such as Batman and Wonder-woman in Western cinema. Incidentally the leading lady in these films was a Jewess from the Ukraine, called Nadia. The Jewish connection does not end there. The Bombay Film Laboratories, which processed most of the films made in Bombay at that time, was started by a Jewish solicitor called Moses Solomon who happened to be the grandfather of another of our contributors, Sophie Jhirard.

Alam Ara had an interesting brush with history. An actor called Master Vithal was the leading man. The studio that he left to join Wadia Movietone, Sharda Studio, sued him for breach of contract. The lawyer who successfully defended him was Mohamed Ali Jinnah, the founder and first president of Pakistan.

A moving tribute was written by J.B.H.Wadia, one of the Wadia brothers who owned and ran Wadia Movietone which appeared in the Times of India in 1966. He pointed out that it was due to David Joseph’s extreme modesty (not an asset in this industry) that he did not receive the full recognition for his pioneering work and for his importance in the Indian film industry. -- Anthony Kerstein & Danny Ezekiel

This article was first published online at:
http://www.chiswick.demon.co.uk/Bollywood.htm
Many thanks to Anthony Kerstein, Henry Gee, and my father, Danny.

Joanna at the Bollywood Bazaar

http://vimeo.com/22887712!

Thanks to Millie Kieve who took this short film at the Bollywood Bazaar shop in the Chor Bazaar, Mumbai on Feb 21, 2011. I had a lovely chat with owner Shahid Mansoori, and bought prints of 'Alam Ara' and 'Hunterwali' - films that were written by my great-grandfather, plus a couple of other posters that looked great. Mr. Mansoori has written books on Bollywood, and has a comprehensive stock of film posters - well worth a visit.

Alam Ara articles in the Times of India

With thanks to Ashleshaa Khurana.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/surat/Google-features-80th-anniversary-of-Indias-first-talkie-Alam-Ara/articleshow/7706680.cms

http://ashindia-ashlesha.blogspot.com/2011/03/alam-ara-indias-first-talkie.html

Alam Ara Google Doodle

This is the Google Doodle that appeared on Google India on March 14 2011 for the 80th anniversary of India's first talking film.

http://digitizor.com/2011/03/14/google-anniversary-alam-ara/

And here's a short, informative Indian TV clip about early Bollywood. There's a new photo of Joseph David in the TV clip, and a mention that Alam Ara was 'based on a Parsi play by Joseph David'.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhlo41_googleys-homage-to-a-hindi-cinema-milestone_news

'Alam Ara' goes missing

There is no surviving copy of 'Alam Ara', the first Indian talking film, written by my great-grandfather. The Times of India investigates.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-14/news-interviews/28687925_1_indian-film-alam-ara-indian-cinema

Indian 'DNA Daily News and Analysis' article about early Bollywood

I was interviewed for a very informative article about the Jewish involvement in early Bollywood.  Thanks to Lenny Bhutia for taking an interest in Joseph David.

Article about Bollywood's Jewish connections

the first jew of bollywood

the first jew of bollywood

Below is an article that I wrote for Jewish Renaissance Magazine about my great-grandfather (on my father's side), Joseph David. It also appears on my writing blog, Delayed Reactions.

The First Jew of Bollywood


I will never know exactly how my great-grandfather spent his evening on 14th March, 1931. He almost certainly attended the Majestic Theatre, Bombay, for the premiere of ‘Alam Ara’(Light of the World): the first full-length Bollywood talkie, to which he’d written the screenplay, and some of the music. ‘Alam Ara’ had been adapted from his popular play about two rival queens, a prince, and a peasant girl. I expect that he, along with the rest of the audience, was amazed by the sounds of speech, and singing to music, never before experienced in an Indian film. Perhaps he heard, among the excited crowd outside, the shouts of touts selling black market tickets for the most successful film yet in Bollywood history. And maybe, after the film had ended, he went home for some dinner. A kosher dinner. My great-grandfather, Joseph David, was an Indian Jew.

But his achievement as an artist from a religious minority wasn’t because of any second-generation creative fusion. ‘Alam Ara’, with its romantic, fantasy plot, was no ‘East is East’. In fact, the Bene-Israeli Jews of Bombay had been somewhat assimilated for centuries; born Joseph David Penkar in the Dongri-Umarkhadi area of Bombay in 1872, Penkar was not only my great-grandfather’s surname (which he later dropped), but the name of his ancestral village. Established in Bombay for around 2000 years, the Bene-Israelis were always a religious minority, but experienced little anti-Semitism. Working as oil-pressers, passing down Hebrew prayers and stories by word-of-mouth, it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that the Bene-Israelis established their own synagogues and rabbis.

My great-grandfather, with minimal schooling, joined the Parsi Imperial Theatrical Company as a stagehand. Given small improvisational parts as an actor, it wasn’t long before his talent with words and music was spotted. Soon, he was working as a playwright, a profession that many in his community equated with running away with the circus. Under British rule, young Bene-Israelis were forming an emerging middle class, entering the army, the medical profession, and education. However, theatre, especially Parsi theatre, was very popular in Bombay, and the new film industry was expanding - the perfect opportunities for a talented outsider.

Fluent in many Indian languages, Hebrew, and English, Joseph David developed a passion for English plays. The influences of Jewish, Hindi and English stories are detectable in Alam Ara (Light of the World), itself based on a legend. In one scene, the wicked queen imprisons a young man who fails to respond to her advances - like the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. And the sub-plot of two lovers kept apart is reminiscent of Rama and Sita in the Ramayana, with perhaps a touch of Romeo and Juliet. Today, three of his plays - Queen Esther, The Maccabean Warriors, and Prince Absalom - are archived in the Tel Aviv National Library. These biblical plays, performed almost a century ago in Bombay, were inspired by Hindu legends put on by touring theatre companies.

After ‘Alam Ara’, Joseph David joined Ardeshir Irani’s Imperial Film Company as a playwright, and was also involved with the producing, directing, and composing. Other screenplays followed: ‘Sati Sone’ (1932), ‘Lal-e-Yaman’ (to which he also composed the score) (1933), and ‘Desh Deepak’ (1935).

My father remembers his grandfather as a gentle, eccentric man. In the late 1930’s, as a young child, my father lived opposite the Wadia Movietone studios in Bombay for a time. He would watch Joseph David enter the film buildings every weekday at 8 a.m., always wearing his trademark fur hat, whatever the weather. Joseph David would often stop by and entertain his daughter by his first marriage, Rebecca, and my father with gossip from the movie sets, and sing the songs he was composing. He often used to sing the wandering minstrel’s lament from ‘Alam Ara’.

Maybe it is time that Joseph David, who died in 1942, received the recognition that he deserves from the Indian government and the Bene-Israeli community.
Long before Bollywood became as mainstream in this country as it is today, I would tell people about my great-grandfather. And in these tense times, I find it heartening to recall that my Jewish ancestor’s script was written for and enjoyed by Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, and other religions alike. Sentimental? Perhaps. But that’s Bollywood.

Published in Jewish Renaissance Magazine, Autumn 2002

With acknowledgements to these links:

adaniel.tripod.com/beneisrael.htm
movies.indiainfo.com/tales/history.html
www.angelfire.com/movies/madhuri/alamara.htm
www.3to6.com/final_retro/caalamara.htm