Talk:Bhagwan Das Garga

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A notable source for information, anecdotes and works of Mr. B D Garga is now available at The Garga Archives. This is being gradually populated with more of his works and collections.

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Bhagwan Das Garga was born on 14 November 1924. He was enrolled to study for a medical career, but this pursuit was interrupted by the occasion of the Quit India Movement in 1942. He decided, around 1943, at the behest of K.A. Abbas, to devote himself to a career in the arts. This is also when he wrote his first piece as a writer on film for Abbas’ publication, Sargam. He then studied Cinematography at St. Xavier’s College, Bombay (Mumbai), later working under noted Indian film director and auteur, V. Shantaram. He started his career as a documentary filmmaker with Storm Over Kashmir (1948), before participating in a diverse set of filmic projects and settings across Europe. He also contributed as Asst. Director to Abbas’ Indo-Soviet co-production film, Pardesi (1957) at Mosfilm Studios in Moscow. Upon his return to India, he helped found the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in 1964. He was also a frequent visiting lecturer at the then-newly founded Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), along with being a member at the Film Advisory Board.

He wrote and contributed to various leading cinema journals across India (Montage, Cinevision, Madhyam) and abroad (the most prominent of these, Cahiers du Cinéma, Revue du Cinema and Sight & Sound – for each of which, he acted as a Correspondent). He also participated extensively in the effort to compile Encyclopaedia Americana and also, the encyclopedia of Soviet Film. Around this time, he availed of an opportunity to conduct extensive research on Indian cinema in order to produce a film anthology to commemorate its golden jubilee, 50 Years of Indian Cinema (1963).

In 1967, he was appointed one of the experts on the UNESCO Committee of the History of World Cinema. This led then to the legendary 1969 exhibition – the first of its kind in Cinematheque Francaise – where he helped Henri Langlois organize a retrospective of the history of Indian cinema. In latter years, he preserved correspondence with Langlois and inherited from him a set of principles regarding the preservation of film that came ultimately to define his work. In subsequent years, Garga was invited by UNESCO to attend roundtable conferences on cinema and television in such venues and festivals as Mannheim, Venice, Beirut, Budapest, Montreal and Locarno. Garga preserved simultaneously a career as an active filmmaker in these years. In 1992, he shifted to Goa with Donnabelle (about whom, noted critic, journalist and the founder-editor of Biblio wrote, ' In his endeavours he has hugely benefited from the energy, drive and application of his wife Donnabelle. It is she who ensures that his passionate engagement with the Seventh Art does not ebb.'), his collaborator and wife, to embark on a career as a writer.

This resulted in the seminal, 1996 compilation, So Many Cinemas, which in its title and through its general scale, identifies the history of cinema in India as a plural, multi-tentacled, giant organism. This was followed by 2005’s Art of Cinema, a compilation of his writings that this present archive most closely resembles, and 2007’s From Raj to Swaraj: The History of Documentary Film in India, which won the National Film Award for Best Book on Cinema. He repeated this feat with 2011’s Silent Cinema in India: A Pictorial Journey.

B.D. Garga passed away on 18 July 2011 in Patiala, Punjab.

The sequel to Silent Cinema in India, a book entitled, The Sunshine Years, about the history of the talkies and studio system in the country, is a work-in- progress.

Garga’s seven-decade long career resulted in close to fifty documentary films (an annotated list will be available on the website), a substantial body of work as a critic, close to five books on cinema, collaborations with noted national and international figures in film and culture, several national and international awards, and recognition, by a community of peers that includes such figures as Kevin Brownlow, as a figure whose work is especially relevant to film history.

I put it here in hope someone will find references for it. - Altenmann >talk 22:08, 5 August 2023 (UTC)