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When Har Mandir Singh Hamraaz published Hindi Film Geet volume II (1941 to 1950) in February 1984 (32 years old), he knew that the compilation work was not complete. Many films remained unknown. Movies are not available. Old film magazines were not available. Old Newspapers were not available. Mostly he had to rely on was film booklets, some records and perhaps some articles and books. Perhaps the biggest problem was knowing the names of the actual singers of the songs. This was because it was usual in those days to put the name of the character in the movie rather than the name of the actual singer. A very famous example that everybody knows is the song Ayega Ane Wala from Mahal, which was actually sung by Lata Mangeshkar but the name mentioned was Kamini, which was the name of the actress Madhubaala in the film.
His hope was that once the book is published the fans of old Hindi films will realize that he needs help and they will help him to complete the book. That is exactly what happened. For the last 41 years generous people from all over the world have been helping him with film magazines, film books, newspapers, record labels and all kinds of information. The singer name problem has largely been solved and there have been large number of updates to this information.
This is definitely a very big and long-awaited update.
When he and I decided to convert all of his work into database in mid 2018, and make it available to the public completely free without any advertisements on a website, we had no idea how long it was going to take. Both of us have been working very hard on this project to try to cover as much as possible, gather information from everywhere possible and putting it together. I'm happy to report that we see now the end of the project, at least this phase anyway. Hamraaz has just handed over the files for volume V (1971 to 1980) to me.
I have finished converting the files for volume II (1941 to 1950), both for the filmography and the songs. The picturization of the songs remains, for which I have started to watch all the 161 movies available to me.
Today we are announcing that information from 1,233 films from this decade that have been added to the Filmography section of the database, bringing the total number of films to 5,056. As usual, the filmography books will be published and will be announced.
Here is the link
https://hindi-movies-songs.com/hfgk/
Also Happy birthday Hamraaz (74) Call!
Now You Know!
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From a Facebook friends post
From an Urdu Film magazine from Karachi.
Now You Know!
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When you undertake a massive project like the Hindi Film database, you always have to decide when to stop checking. if you keep going forever then, of course, you will never publish anything. If you stop too soon then there might be many mistakes. So it's somewhat of a compromise when to stop.
I have been watching Hindi movies to determine the picturization of various songs. I checked my data as much as I could but then when I found that I have done enough, I published. My hope was that other people will watch films and let me know if I made mistakes.
Recently a Facebook friend of mine named Sudipta Bhaduri contacted me and started asking me some questions about the database website. It turns out that he has been consulting it to find the picturizations, he seems to be very interested in people singing the songs and and also those who are sitting around or dancing. In the end, I was able to convince him to do a project for me and he is working on it now.
Yesterday he expressed doubt about three songs from Miss Mary. He said that the elderly person who is sitting there is not Badri Prasad, which is what I have written on the website. It looks like Jagdish Sethi to him. I watched the song again and definitely he is correct!.
I want to thank him for pointing out my mistake. I am happy to have a friend like him.
Now You Know!.
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