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professor toofaanii publishers, East Lansing, MI USA is happy to announce their 133rd book
Indian Cinema Hall Fire Felt Around the World
(The story of an Indian cinema hall fire accident at Hyderabad on June 14, 1936, told via contemporary newspaper clippings)
M V Surender
On June 15, 1936 a film called College Girl was being shown in Moti Mahal Talkie, Sultan Bazaar, Hyderabad. As was customary, purdah ladies from the high society were watching it from the wooden balcony. Suddenly around 9:15 pm, a fire broke out. There was heat, smoke and panic everywhere. At first it was reported that 20 people had died, but later it was confirmed that 11 women and three children had died. One of the most amazing thing was that one of the ladies took off her Sari, tied it to one of the balcony pillars and lowered about 40 ladies one by one. Unfortunately all could not be saved because many had jumped from the balcony. She was Ashraf-un-Nisa Begum, the elderly wife of a retired Indian Army officer. For this act of bravery, she was awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal of the British Empire by the British Government in 1937.
This is the story of that tragedy as told through contemporary newspapers of the world.
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professor toofaanii publishers, East Lansing, MI USA is happy to announce their 102nd book
Early Radio Artists: A Pictorial: Part I
by
Aftab Datta
The Indian Listener was started in December 1935, which became Akashvani in January, 1958 in India. Besides the program, the magazine had essays on music, biographies and photos of artists, reports about musical conferences etc.
Until recently the only way to read the old issues was to visit the archives. Luckily, a lot of old issues were scanned and put on the internet. I downloaded a lot of the issues and was happy to read the articles and see old photos.
My joy knew no bounds when Vinay Pande mentioned that Aftab had painstakingly captured hundreds of photos from those issues. I immediately got in touch with him and suggested that a book should be published on this material. Very generously he sent me all the photos.
In this first part, we present about 700 images with names from A to L. Part 2 will have the rest.
Paperback 6 by 9, Black and White, 191 pages, Royalty-free, sold at printing cost.
Now You Know!
First few pages may be read here
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professor toofaanii publishers, East Lansing, MI USA is happy to announce their 131st book
Hindi Films Crew 1933-1940
Pradeep Asrani, Malini Kanth and Prof Surjit Singh
Everybody who has seen a Hindi film knows the titles sequence structure: the censor certificate, some disclaimers, some acknowledgments, the producer or the production company, the name of the film, the lead players, the character artists, a few smaller roles, perhaps animals, cars, the technicians like cinematographers, sound recorders, then editors, perhaps junior artist suppliers and the vehicle suppliers, usually ending with the lyricist, the music director, the director and the producer. There may be a mention of the music company, the studio and the sound recording system.
This huge amount of information has never been collected in systematic way so far. We have undertaken to do it, directly from the videos available.
We have avoided the information that is already included in the monumental Hindi Film Geet Kosh by Har Mandir Singh 'Hamraaz' and focused on the rest of the crew. At this time we are limited by the availability of the movies. We plan to explore other sources at a later time.
Paperback, 6 by 9, 111 pages
Now You Know!
First few pages here
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