Kamal Swaroop’s documentary on Dadasaheb Phalke

This could come as a surprise for some. The father of Indian cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke had a Varanasi connect. The legendary filmmaker stayed briefly in the city. This aspect of his life is being freezed in a documentary being made by film director Kamal Swaroop, who had assisted Richard Attenborough for the film Gandhi.
“Not many people know that Dadasaheb Phalke had a dispute with his partner in his film company so he came to Varanasi and stayed here for two years from 1920 to 1922.During his stay, he wrote a play called Rangbhoomi, which was later staged in different cities of Maharashtra. He stayed in Sardar Angre’s Wada in Bramghat here. Even Lokmanya Tilak, whom he was very close to, came to meet him in Varanasi where a Congress convention was held in 1920,” informs the director.
Adding further, he says, “This documentary, which is being made for the Films Division of India is part of the project that I had undertaken in 2006 called Tracing Phalke, which also included doing workshops in all cities in which in he lived like Nasik, Mumbai, Pune, Baroda and Kolhapur. Varanasi chapter of Phalke’s life has been captured in the 90-minute documentary, Rangbhoomi.”
The filmmaker is planning a feature film on the life of Dadasaheb Phalke. “I have fictionalised his life in an eight-hour long film called Bees Raniyo Ke Baiscope. I plan to make it in 2016 that would be in three parts and I wish to rope in Aamir Khan for the role since he would be in the right age to play the legendary character,” says Kamal.