Silent film in Sydney on what led to the building of Taj Mahal

SYDNEY: Shiraz — a Mughal romance from the silent era of Indian cinema — is set to  dazzle Sydney audiences in its most complete form known to exist.

Early in January 2007, the film will be screened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of the ongoing four-month long Goddess: Divine Energy exhibition. The film will be presented with unique, live accompaniment by Dva — the internationally renowned musical duo of Tunji Beier and Linsey Pollak — performing an original score on percussive and hybrid wind.

The new 35mm print was recently made from a nitrate print at the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) in Canberra. “The surviving print of the film at our National Film Archive of India is not complete,” admits noted film historian, Amrit Gangar. “The nitrate  print was acquired by the NFSA in the 1970s as a part of a large batch of cinema prints accumulated by an Australian distributor over many years,” says Meg Labrum, Chief Curator at the NFSA. “Very few copies of Indian features of this period exist worldwide. The original nitrate print is also complete and with possibly slightly more footage than any other known copy, so the preservation was well justified,” she adds.

The film was the second collaboration between Himanshu Rai’s British Instructional Films Limited and the German mammoth film production company, UFA. The first Indo-German co-production was Light of Asia (1925). The director, Franz Osten and other German crew continued to work for Rai’s production house, Bombay Talkies on 16 films, including Achhut Kanya and Kangan.

Shiraz is a visually sumptuous, epic story of love, mistaken identity  and devotion that eventually led to the building of the Taj Mahal — albeit a fictionalised version. Shiraz was premiered on December 20, 1928 in Berlin, and later released in UK, USA and Australia. The film was a worldwide success especially in North America according to Gangar.

“The initial caravan and battle scenes fleetingly echo forward to the big-budget, multi-starrer Mughal-E-Azam,” says Gangar who has written Franz Osten and the Bombay Talkies: A Journey from Munich to Malad.

“This massive production was supervised by Himanshu Rai who also plays the role of Shiraz. As the initial titles claimed, Shiraz was shot entirely in India and without any artificial lights,” he adds. Most films of that era were studio bound.

Adrienne McKibbins, freelance film writer and executive officer of the Film Critics Circle of Australia, was impressed by the restraint over the usual flamboyance expected in Indian films. “Shiraz has a slightly  more ‘realistic’ look than many of the films of the period, in that the make up, décor and acting are in moderation,” she says. “A version of this film was screened some years ago at the Sydney Film Festival as a special event, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. It was presented as a one off special event of an exotic Indian film and not screened in any context,” says McKibbins who suggested the film be screened at the gallery.

Shiraz is also remembered for another naughty reason, suggests McKibbins. “It features a couple of passionate kisses, and of course there is a myth that there is no sex or kissing in Indian films... this may seem flippant, but it always seems to be mentioned when Shiraz is discussed.”