Filmindia

filmindia

Early ad of Mughal-E-Azam from Filmindia March 1946
Editor	Baburao Patel
Staff writers	Sushila Rani Patel (as Judas, Hyacinth)
Frequency	Monthly
Publisher	Baburao Patel
Founder	Baburao Patel
Year founded	1935
Final issue	1961
Country	India
Based in	Bombay
Language	English

filmindia was an English monthly film magazine covering Indian cinema. Started by Baburao Patel in 1935,filmindia was the first English film periodical to be published from Bombay. The magazine was reportedly run "single-handedly" by Patel, who wielded power through this medium to "make or destroy a film". Its most popular column was "The Editor's Mail" answered by Patel. The magazine featured film news, editorials, studio round-ups, gossip, and reviews of different language films, mainly from Hindi and regional cinema and affiliated reviews from Hollywood. His articles included siding with the lesser known cinema workers like the technicians, extras and stuntmen.

Patel met the painter S. M. Pandit around 1938, and asked him to design the covers for filmindia. One of Pandit's assistants, Raghubir Mulgaonkar, was also a designer in the same periodical. Both of them worked with Patel at filmindia through the 1930s and 1940s.

The magazine "created a sensation" on its launch with its "canny mix of rumour and review, observation and opinion" and Patel became a "celebrity" equal to the film stars he wrote about. The magazine reading target was the "elite readership", including college going youth. Termed a status symbol with college students, actor Dev Anand said of his Lahore college days, "boys in the campus used to carry copies of filmindia along with their textbooks. It was their Bible". Ramachandran and Rukmini state that "filmindia was the only magazine that counted in those days". It remained in publication from 1935 to 1961.

The first film periodical "exclusively devoted to cinema" was established in India in 1924, with the Gujarati magazine Mouj Majah by J. K. Dwivedi. Its success began a trend with the Bengali language Bioscope, published by Shailjananda Mukherjee in 1930, Filmland an English language weekly published from Bengal since 1930, and the Hindi Chitrapat in 1934, by Hrishamcharan Jain from Delhi.

In 1935, on his thirty-first birthday, Baburao Patel (1904–1982), started filmindia, with a small 'f' in the name, which was published initially by D. K. Parker and B. P. Samant and edited by Patel. "The very first issue of filmindia became a huge success and Patel gradually took over the monthly journal" making filmindia achieve "an unprecedented cult status". The magazine remained in publication till 1960, when Patel's interest in nationalism and politics made him launch "a national magazine" called Mother India. Patel found it difficult to run two periodicals simultaneously and he made the decision to shut down filmindia and focus on Mother India.