On this Artalaap episode, I, Kamayani speak to Jayant Parashar about his family's legacy -- a pre-Independence film magazine called Film Pictorial, started in Lahore by his grandfather and great-uncle, RK Parashar and ML Parashar. A well-regarded periodical of the 1940s, Film Pictorial shut down once the brothers moved to Delhi after the 1947 Partition.

We talk about how Jayant came across the magazine, its role -- similar to other high-profile film publications of that era -- as a snapshot of South Asia's urban cinema culture straddling India and Pakistan's Independence as well as the scattershot, digital preservation of lost archives through which we reconstruct and respond to that era.

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Jayant Parashar is a Mumbai-based cinematographer and musician. Film Pictorial (1941-1947) was an English-language magazine on Hindustani cinema co-founded and edited by his grandfather and great-uncle in Lahore.

Credits:

Producer: Squarewave Studios, New Delhi

Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma

Production Associate: Priya Thakur

Images courtesy Jayant Parashar via Surjit Singh

Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee

Marketing: Dipalie Mehta

Additional support: Raghav Sagar

Patreon support: Shalmoli Halder

Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

CONTENTS

0.00-02.30 – Introduction

02.30- 07.40– Discovering a family legacy.

07.40- 15.00 – Back issues of Film Pictorial on the internet.

15.00 - 18.51 – The Parashar brothers and their engagement with the pre-Independence film industry.

18.51 - 27.34 – The wide range of topics the magazine has explored, both serious and light-hearted versus the present day reporting on the film industry.

27.34- 31.37 – Film Pictorial after the Partition, and the value of vintage film magazines in the present.

31.37- 33.28 – How family legacies impact worldviews.