Bengali Film Industry Name Page

But every year, on the night of Saraswati Puja, the surviving technicians of the Bengali film industry—the aging light men, the re-recording artists, the costume stitchers—gather on the steps of the old Tollygunge studio. They don’t pray to a god. They pray to a name.

“Unthreatening?” Hiralal laughed, a bitter, wonderful sound. “The Magistrate banned my Alibaba for showing a man kissing a woman’s hand. Unthreatening is not our destiny.” bengali film industry name

But Hiralal Sen, on his last day of good health, shot the first slate. On it, he wrote in chalk: But every year, on the night of Saraswati

“The British have the ‘Empire.’ The Americans have ‘Hollywood’—a silly name for a holy wood. The French have ‘Pathé’—a man’s name. But you… you have a river. A language. A million stories that have never been told outside the addas of College Street. Your industry should not be named after a place. It should be named after a feeling.” “Unthreatening

But Radheshyam’s mind was racing. Tollygunge. The word was a bastard child of English and Bengali— Tolli (an old Bengali word for a narrow lane or a toll-point) + Gunge (from the Hindi ganj , a market). The British had built a canal there, a murderous, mosquito-breeding ditch called the Tolly’s Nullah. It was ugly. It was colonial. It was everything they hated.