"Maya Mahal" could easily be a moniker for cinema itself. A darkened theatre with a white screen on which light flickers like a phantom and conjures up visions of faraway people and places... what is that, if not a "Palace of Illusions"?
Priya Paul's film memorabilia
Priya Paul's collection of film memorabilia represents an eccentric mix of films. Many of these films have not been considered socially or artistically significant by elite standards. Maya Mahal does not intend to celebrate the realist strain in Hindi Cinema. We present to you an alternative history which is decidedly excessive, melodramatic and utopian.
A history of film posters
Till about the 1960s, film posters were printed in a traditional lithographic press, which means images were drawn onto a metal or stone plate and transferred onto paper. Some of the Fearless Nadia posters you will see here are simple two-tone chromolithographic prints (e.g. Toofani Tirandaz, Meena Traders, Bombay). During the 1990s, digital photo printing almost completely replaced other forms of poster art. As the hand-painted poster became a rare sight, people also started to realise the vintage value of this dying art form and collections such as this began.
Jungle Ka JawaharPriya Paul Collection
As we view these posters, we realize that this is an ingenious craft that pulls out the most essential and salable aspects of a film and creates a montage of promised pleasures.
The history of poster art is marked by the missing names of poster artists. Here are some names from across the decades that we know and must mention: Baburao Painter, Tilak, Diwakar Karkare, Mulgaonka, D.R. Bhosle, S.M. Pandit, Pamart, Faiz, C. Mohan, Prithvi Soni, Laxman, Art View and many others.
Stunt QueenPriya Paul Collection
The eclectic range of posters in the Priya Paul collection demonstrates how publicity material can potentially democratize the cinematic public sphere.
A sizeable number of posters in this collection are of B and C circuit films, films that you will not read about in books or watch on television. But as a "traveling form" (Mazumdar 2003), the poster circulates these marginal fantasies into locations wider that the theatre.
CobraPriya Paul Collection
Even if we don't enter the B and C circuit halls, we can encounter their posters in a back alley or bus stop while traveling in the city.
As poster art becomes legitimized as an independent art form, these transgressive imaginations will also get mainstream visibility via exhibitions and catalogues.
Ulti GangaPriya Paul Collection
Pramila
Esther Victoria Abraham was born into a wealthy Baghdadi Jewish family in Calcutta. Like in a typical melodramatic film of the time, a sudden reversal in family fortunes forced Esther and her sisters to seek employment immediately after school and Esther started her professional life as a teacher at the Talmud Jewish Boys' School. By 1934, Esther was nineteen, divorced, and a single mother. During a casual visit to Bombay, she got an acting offer and immediately sent a telegram to Calcutta "saying she would not be returning."
As "Pramila", she excelled in roles that presented her as a bold, Westernized woman, mostly playing what she described as a "dangerous" second lead.
She acted in more than 35 films from 1935 to 1961 and was closely associated with the stunt film genre, acting in adventure films like Jungle King (Wadia Movietone, 1939), and Bijlee (Prakash Picture, 1939), where one would find her dressed in tiger skins and jumping off horses.
While Fearless Nadia played the vigilante superwoman in many of these films, Pramila performed the scheming vamp.
As Pramila herself seems to have recognized, these gender stereotypes not only sent out moralistic messages about the "emancipated woman", but paradoxically, also enables the unabashed portrayal of strong, sexually aware female characters.
Pramila performed her own stunts in many films, severely injuring herself on more than one occasion. You see Pramila here as the whip-wielding, modern girl in Ulti Ganga (K. Dhaibar, 1942).
Lobby cards
In the United States, lobby cards began to be printed in the 1910s, and as the name indicates, were used in displays in the lobbies of theatres. Produced in sets of 8 to 16, lobby cards depict key plots and characters.
PyaasaPriya Paul Collection
This art and industrial form began to lose popularity as the movie hall was gradually dislodged as the chief venue of spectatorship.
House No. 44Priya Paul Collection
Today, with most of us watching films on computers and DVD players, the lobby card has become mostly redundant.
Owing to their small sizes, they were conducive for personal collecting by hobbyists, or storage in disused spaces in theatres and distribution offices. This is how they have resurfaced as collectibles in the 21st century.
ShatranjPriya Paul Collection
Maya Mahal showcases a variety of lobby cards in various formats. In some, publicity stills are directly printed onto a photographic or cardboard base; in others the photographic still is pasted onto the surface of the lobby card.
DhoonPriya Paul Collection
The photographs used are often hand-tinted either in the negative or the positive print. For example, see the beautiful colours in the lobby card of Dhoon (M. Kumar, 1953).
Film Magazines
The Indian subcontinent got its first dedicated film journal in 1924 with the Gujarati Mouj Majah launched in Bombay by J.K. Dwivedi. Film viewership and production dramatically increased between 1921 to 1934, and the emerging parallel industry of print kept up with this pace. By 1938 there were 68 "leading screen journals" in India (Bharucha 1938), mostly published from Calcutta, Lahore and Bombay, which were all competing sites of production till the 1940's.
Mother IndiaPriya Paul Collection
In various languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, and English, these magazines carries film reviews, synopses, interviews, photographs, studio notes and letters from readers. They give us a unique insight into spectatorship practices and popular attitudes towards the cinema of the time.
Song Booklets
Song booklets are slim pamphlets that carry miniaturized versions of the film poster on the cover, complete cast and crew credits, the films's synopsis, production still, and most importantly, the lyrics of the songs. Most song booklets carry this information in two or more languages and scripts, including English, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, and Bengali. Booklets were often meant as publicity targeted at distributors and exhibitors, but were sold directly to spectators as can be gauged from the printed price of 4 annas on the cover.
Meri AdalatPriya Paul Collection
This fragile and slight object is one of the most precious resources we have today for writing a history of Indian cinema.
Of the scores of undocumented silent films made in India from the 1910's to the 1930's, only a handful remain at the National Film Archives of India.
Nearly 2200 films were produced in Bombay alone between 1931 and 1950, and at least 90% of these films are unavailable today for viewing.
ZabakPriya Paul Collection
The prints have deteriorated into dust, burnt in fires, or simply disappeared due to lack of care and archival attention.
It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the archive of early Indian cinema is haunted by this absence.
Thus, the song booklet, with its rich information and illustration is often the only evidence we have to reconstruct a lost history of Indian cinema.
