"It was a wonderful experience interacting with you and appreciate the way you have planned and executed the whole publication process within the agreed timelines.”
Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
What is the year of the film? This question is often asked but it may surprise you to know that it has many answers. The most definite answer is the year mentioned on the censor certificate. This used to be hard to find. However, now the year and the whole censor information of Hindi films from 1931 to 2010 is available on the database website.
There is no official publication for this information. Also, this information changes from city to city as films having limited number of prints, cannot be released everywhere at once. Finding this information requires much more work. One can find it in the magazine reviews, magazine and newspaper ads, and, sometimes in the trade publications. All these sources are hard to come by.
Recently, SS and two of his co-workers published a book on the films running in the Madras theatres,
Films Showing in Madras Theatres (1941-1947), by MV Surender, N Ramaswamy and Prof Surjit Singh (2021)
In the book at hand, we present information about the stage shows, silents and talkies running in Bombay in 1931. We plan to cover the years 1931-1950 at least. This information is based on the Bombay Chronicle newspaper available on the Internet Archive website.
It is fascinating to follow the life of many films, some run for a long time, some only a few weeks, some move to other theatres. We found this information to be enjoyable to work with and fascinating.
We hope that our readers will also enjoy this nostalgia-inspiring work.
Ajit Sidhu, Professor Surjit Singh
Ajit Sidhu
The author, who was born, brought up and educated in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, has been working in State Bank of India until 2018. Her primary hobby is reading Hindi books and novels and Shivani is her most favourite author. She also loves reading Hindi Poetry, Sufi Shayari and General Knowledge books. She loves music, especially old Hindi film songs and Sufi songs.
She is now settled in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Prof Surjit Singh, a diehard movie fanatic, period.
He is a retired Theoretical Physicist. He has been watching Hindi movies since 1952, has been collecting Hindi songs, movies and magazines since 1969, and has been writing about these things since 1996. He has had a website since 1999.
