Hero Hiralal: Flashback on first, forgotten Indian behind the movie camera

KOLKATA: In 1913, Dadasaheb Phalke created history when he directed Raja Harishchandra, the country’s first feature film. However, he was not the first Indian to make movies.

That credit belongs to Hiralal Sen (1866-1917) from Calcutta.

Sen not only experimented with the new medium, but also made fundamental contributions to it.

“In 1904, he captured on film a public rally opposing Lord Curzon’s plan to divide Bengal. To record the immensity of the rally, he placed the camera on top of the treasury building so that he could film the speakers, including Surendranath Banerjee (1848-1925), against the backdrop of a huge crowd that extended almost two miles,” said Sanjoy Mukherjee, film historian and former professor of film studies at Jadavpur University. The camera placement was novel in those days.

Many consider the film on the proposed Bengal partition to be the first political documentary in the country.

Sen also shot two product commercials for Jabakusum hair oil and Edward’s anti-malaria drug that were probably the country’s first commercials.

“The high point of Hiralal Sen’s career was the movie he made when George V came to India. The other was the film on the Bengal partition,” said Mukherjee.

It wasn’t easy, said another expert. “… ailing from cancer of the throat and standing on the verge of insolvency, he stood in competition with no less than four of the best cameramen from England working for the government of India and beat them in their own game by being the first to release the Visit Film of Delhi Durbar with a wider coverage,” wrote Kaushik Majumdar, a researcher on silent films in The Silent Film Quarterly, a magazine published from Hollywood.

Movies were a natural progression for Sen, who once won the top award in a contest organised by Calcutta’s famous photography studio Bourne & Shepherd that was set up in 1863. It was one of the earliest in the world.

On December 28, 1895, the first movie was shown in Paris — or anywhere in the world. In India, the first show was held at Watson Hotel in Bombay on July 7, 1896. In 1898, Hiralal Sen shot a dancing scene from the opera The Flower of Persia.

Along with his brother Motilal, Sen set up The Royal Bioscope Company in 1898, India’s first movie company.

Initially, they purchased films made by companies in England and showed them at parties and weddings of the rich. These were mainly films shot by Englishmen about daily life on the streets of Calcutta and in India.

But the creative urge did not allow Sen to make money showing films made by others. He wanted to shoot them too. In 1903, he filmed the popular Alibaba and Forty Thieves.

Unfortunately, Sen now only lives in a few books and notes of researchers and academics. There is not even a proper biography on him. On October 24, 1917, a fire in a godown in north Kolkata, where all his films were stored, gutted his complete works. He died two days later.

Sen lacked the business acumen that could have helped him find commercial success with the medium he was passionate about.

Towards the closing years, he fell on such hard times that he had to sell off his favourite cameras to a usurer. Poor at managing relations, his ties with brother Motilal also snapped towards the end.

“Sen is indeed the pioneer of movies but did not get that recognition,” said Anjan Bose, whose grandfather, Anadi Nath Bose, purchased two cameras used by Sen.

Sen did not marry, movies were his only spouse.

“Though Alibaba and Forty Thieves was not a feature film, Hiralal Sen made it in 1903, the same year when the Great Train Robbery, one of the very first films, was released in the US. If a fire destroyed his works, we are guilty of almost erasing his contribution and memory,” rued Dipankar Bhattacharya, secretary of Uttarpara Cine Club.

In 2012, the year after the Trinamool Congress government assumed power, an open platform was set up by Kolkata International Film Festival authorities to screen silent era films in the way they were screened at the turn of the 20th century. They called the platform Hiralal Sen mancha.