Friday 15 September 2006, 19.00

Programme duration 80 min

In 1913, when DG Phalke’s pioneering personal cinematography gave magical movement to Indian mythology, India was still a British colony. A versatile artist (painter, engraver, photographer, architect, musician, magician, actor and more), Phalke was a complete karmayogi (man of action). A significant figure, he personified the prayoga spirit in those awkward times, mixing a patriotic swadeshi spirit with an experimental cinematographic praxis – negotiating folk theatre and epic, myth and modernity, anti-colonial complexity and realism, in his construction of gaze, frame, space and time.

Phalke’s surviving incomplete films are followed by work from the state-funded public body, Films Division (1968–79). With these postcolonial artists, the cinematographic prayoga praxis fell largely into the public domain.

Raja Harishchandra (King Harishchandra)
D.G.Phalke, India 1913, 20 min

Lanka Dahan (Lanka Aflame)
D.G.Phalke, India 1917, 9 min

Shree Krishna Janma (Birth of Shree Krishna)
D.G.Phalke, India 1918, 6 min

Setu Bandhan (Bridging the Ocean)
D.G.Phalke, India 1932, 9 min

And I Make Short Films
S.N.S Sastry, India 1968, 16 min

Trip
Pramod Pati, India 1970, 4 min

Child On A Chess Board
Vijay B Chandra, India 1979, 8 min

Explorer
Pramod Pati, India 1968, 8 min

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£4, booking recommended