This extraordinary book documents a glorious phase of cinema in India - the silent cinema era. Of the approximately 1,300 silent films produced between 1913 and 1931, barely one per cent have survived, and not all of these in their entirety. The book traces the stories of its earliest practitioners, who overcame many obstacles and pioneered several innovations to develop a cinema that often matched the standards of film-making in the West. B.D. Garga, arguably India's finest film historian, paints a fascinating portrait of the era. Illustrated with rare publicity brochures, stills, posters and other invaluable memorabilia, and including a perceptive foreword by renowned Oscar-winning film historian Kevin Brownlow, Silent Cinema in India: A Pictorial Journey brings alive the story of the birth of cinema in a country that is now the largest producer of films in the world.B.D. Garga (1924-2011) was one of India's most eminent film scholars and a founder member of the National Film Archive, Pune. He is the author of So Many Cinemas: The Motion Picture in India, now considered a seminal text on Indian cinema; The Art of Cinema: An Insider's Journey through Fifty Years of Film History; and From Raj to Swaraj: The Non-fiction Film in India, which won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema in 2008.
