Dadasaheb Torne

Ramchandra Gopal "Dadasaheb" Torne (Marathi: रामचंद्र गोपाळ "दादासाहेब" तोरणे)(13 April 1890 - 19 January 1960) was the first Indian director and producer to make a feature film in India; that film was named Shree Pundalik. This historic record is well established by an advertisement in The Times of India published on 25 May 1912. Several leading reference books on cinema including The Guinness Book of Movie Facts & Feats, A Pictorial History of Indian Cinema and Marathi Cinema : In Restrospect amply substantiate this milestone achievement of the pioneer Indian feature-filmmaker.

He is considered the "Father of Indian cinema."

Although Torne made his first film, Shree pundalik (पुंडलिक, 1912) just under a year before Dhundiraj Govind "Dadasaheb" Phalke made his, it is the latter who is regarded as the father of Indian cinema. The distinction may lie with the fact that, unlike Phalke, Torne sent his film overseas for processing. Moreover, Torne's Pundalik was 1,500' (c. 22 minutes) long, about 1,200' shorter than Phalke's Raja Harischandra, which ran for about 40 minutes.

Ramchandra Gopal Torne was born on 13 April 1890 in Malwan village on the western Indian Konkan coast near Mumbai. Following his father's death, the young boy and his mother were asked to leave the house by his uncle and they were forced to live in poverty.

At the age of 10 or 11, and with only four years of formal education behind him, Torne dropped out of school and headed to Mumbai. Once there, he was employed by the Cotton Green Electrical Company, where he learned basic electrical installation and instrument repair.

This is where he got in touch with the Shripad theater company. He was quite impressed by the plays conducted by this company as well as the new foreign films which were being released in Mumbai. As a young man of 21-22, he got interested in making his own movie. With another friend and financier, Mr. Chitre, he managed to import raw film and movie camera from abroad, and shot the first Indian feature film Shree Pundalik. This first Indian feature film was released on 18 May 1912 in Mumbai's Coronation movie theater. Almost one year after this movie was released, Dadasaheb Phalke released the second Indian feature film Raja Harischandra in the same theater on 3 May 1913. Pundalik continued to run in the same movie theatre in Mumbai for about two weeks. The advertisement for the film published in The Times of India used such attractive announcements to lure more viewers-- "Half of the Mumbai population has seen it, the remaining half should also see it".

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