New Delhi, June 2: Baburao Painter was born on June 3, 1890, into a traditional artisan family in Kolhapur. Surrounded by carpentry, blacksmithing, carving, and painting, he learned to connect art and science without any formal schooling or art college.
When foreign access to camera technology was restricted, Baburao chose the path of self-reliance. Along with his devoted disciple V.G. Damle and carpenter friend Dnyanba Sutar, he struggled for two years on a simple lathe machine in Kolhapur.
He purchased an old projector from the scrap market. After meticulously studying its wheels and gear systems, he astonished the world in 1918 by creating India’s first indigenous motion picture camera. This camera could open and close the lens 16 times in one second. The first test of this homegrown camera captured scenes of children swimming in Rankala Lake and women washing clothes at the banks of the Panchganga River. This remarkable success led to the establishment of the Maharashtra Film Company on December 1, 1918.
The progressive ideas of Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur greatly influenced Baburao. The Maharaj not only provided land for cinematic experiments but also supplied a generator and other essential facilities.
During that era, men played women’s roles on screen. Baburao broke this conservative tradition.
Baburao Painter was not just a film director or mechanic; he was the first visual artist in Indian cinema. He introduced the concept of storyboarding to the film industry, sketching every shot before filming to prevent wastage of raw film rolls. Later, the world-renowned filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein praised this technique.
Between 1921 and 1922, he became the first producer to distribute multi-page program booklets to attract audiences. The poster he created for the 1924 film “Kalyan Khajana” is still regarded as the oldest surviving picture poster in Indian cinema history.
Baburao’s studio was the first practical academy of Indian cinema, nurturing over 500 luminaries, including V. Shantaram, S. Fattelal, and Bhalji Pendharkar.
His disciples founded the Prabhat Film Company on June 1, 1929. However, the Maharashtra Film Company was shut down in 1931. Later, at the request of V. Shantaram, he directed the immensely popular talkie film “Lokshahir Ramjoshi” (1947), but his heart remained in the serene world of painting and sculpture.
On January 16, 1954, this true artist faded into the pages of history, but his indigenous pride still resonates in the cameras of Indian cinema today.
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