
Directing
Ardeshir Irani
Place of birth
Pune, Maharashtra, India
Known for
Directing
Credits
13 titles
Shri. Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani was born in Pune, Maharashtra, and was a writer, director, producer, actor, film distributor, film showman, and cinematographer in the silent and sound eras of early Indian cinema. He launched Sagar Movietone and Sagar Productions. He was the director of India's first sound film Alam Ara. He was the producer of India's first color film Kisan Kanya. He was renowned for making films in Hindi, Gujarati, Telugu, English, German, Indonesian, Persian, Urdu and Tamil. He was a successful entrepreneur who owned film theatres, a gramophone agency, a car agency, and Imperial Film Company, the parent company of Sagar. Ardeshir Irani is considered to be the father of In…
Known for
7.0A Princess is tricked into marrying a naive and illiterate youth.
Kalidas
1931
NRKisan Kanya is a 1937 Indian Hindi-language film directed by Moti Gidwani and produced by Ardeshir Irani under the banner of Imperial Pictures. Made using Cinecolor, the film is based on a novel by Saadat Hasan Manto that highlights the struggles of poor farmers. The film is historically significant as India’s first indigenously made colour film. While V. Shantaram's Sairandhri (1933) featured scenes in colour, it was processed and printed in Germany, distinguishing Kisan Kanya as the first colour film entirely produced within India.
Farmer’s Daughter
1937
8.0Biopic on the classic Persian poet of the 11th century Ferdowsi, and the author of Shahnameh, which is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian speaking countries.
Ferdowsi
1934
6.5A period fantasy that told of the ageing king of Kamarpur, and his two rival queens, Navbahar and Dilbahar, and their rivalry when a fakir predicts that Navbahar will bear the king's heir. Dilbahar unsuccessfully tries to seduce the army chief Adil (Vithal) and vengefully destroys his family, leaving his daughter Alam Ara (Zubeida) to be raised by nomads. Eventually, Alam Ara's nomad friends invade the palace, expose Dilbahar's schemes, release Adil from the dungeon and she marries the prince of the realm.
Alam Ara
1931
8.0Bhakta Prahlada is the first full length Telugu talkie film based on the story of Narasimha and Prahlada in Hindu epics. The film is now lost; surviving artefacts include a few stills, advertisements, and reviews.
Bhakta Prahlada
1932
6.2Golnar is a young tea house waitress who was kidnapped as a child and taken to Lorestan with a clan of bandits living among the Lors. The leader of the thieves, Gholi Khan, is beginning to look at her with interest now she is a grown woman. Little did she know that a young man called Jafar is going to be just near.
Lor Girl
1933
Behind the camera
7.0A Princess is tricked into marrying a naive and illiterate youth.
Kalidas
1931
NRKisan Kanya is a 1937 Indian Hindi-language film directed by Moti Gidwani and produced by Ardeshir Irani under the banner of Imperial Pictures. Made using Cinecolor, the film is based on a novel by Saadat Hasan Manto that highlights the struggles of poor farmers. The film is historically significant as India’s first indigenously made colour film. While V. Shantaram's Sairandhri (1933) featured scenes in colour, it was processed and printed in Germany, distinguishing Kisan Kanya as the first colour film entirely produced within India.
Farmer’s Daughter
1937
8.0Biopic on the classic Persian poet of the 11th century Ferdowsi, and the author of Shahnameh, which is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian speaking countries.
Ferdowsi
1934
6.5A period fantasy that told of the ageing king of Kamarpur, and his two rival queens, Navbahar and Dilbahar, and their rivalry when a fakir predicts that Navbahar will bear the king's heir. Dilbahar unsuccessfully tries to seduce the army chief Adil (Vithal) and vengefully destroys his family, leaving his daughter Alam Ara (Zubeida) to be raised by nomads. Eventually, Alam Ara's nomad friends invade the palace, expose Dilbahar's schemes, release Adil from the dungeon and she marries the prince of the realm.
Alam Ara
1931
6.5A period fantasy that told of the ageing king of Kamarpur, and his two rival queens, Navbahar and Dilbahar, and their rivalry when a fakir predicts that Navbahar will bear the king's heir. Dilbahar unsuccessfully tries to seduce the army chief Adil (Vithal) and vengefully destroys his family, leaving his daughter Alam Ara (Zubeida) to be raised by nomads. Eventually, Alam Ara's nomad friends invade the palace, expose Dilbahar's schemes, release Adil from the dungeon and she marries the prince of the realm.
Alam Ara
1931
6.5A period fantasy that told of the ageing king of Kamarpur, and his two rival queens, Navbahar and Dilbahar, and their rivalry when a fakir predicts that Navbahar will bear the king's heir. Dilbahar unsuccessfully tries to seduce the army chief Adil (Vithal) and vengefully destroys his family, leaving his daughter Alam Ara (Zubeida) to be raised by nomads. Eventually, Alam Ara's nomad friends invade the palace, expose Dilbahar's schemes, release Adil from the dungeon and she marries the prince of the realm.
Alam Ara
1931
8.0Bhakta Prahlada is the first full length Telugu talkie film based on the story of Narasimha and Prahlada in Hindu epics. The film is now lost; surviving artefacts include a few stills, advertisements, and reviews.
Bhakta Prahlada
1932
6.2Golnar is a young tea house waitress who was kidnapped as a child and taken to Lorestan with a clan of bandits living among the Lors. The leader of the thieves, Gholi Khan, is beginning to look at her with interest now she is a grown woman. Little did she know that a young man called Jafar is going to be just near.
Lor Girl
1933
6.2Golnar is a young tea house waitress who was kidnapped as a child and taken to Lorestan with a clan of bandits living among the Lors. The leader of the thieves, Gholi Khan, is beginning to look at her with interest now she is a grown woman. Little did she know that a young man called Jafar is going to be just near.
Lor Girl
1933
10.0A Princess is forbidden to see her childhood sweetheart and forced to marry an emperor.
Shirin and Farhad
1935
A moralistic social film in a contemporary setting. The plot concerns a young woman, Sarojini, who, under the influence of her jailbird cousin Jairam swindles her aged husband and ruins her lover, the next door neighbor Thakurdas.
The Debt of Sin
1924
8.0A grand Mahabharata adaptation, this film focuses on Duryodhana's plot to usurp the Pandavas' kingdom. It culminates in the infamous dice game where Yudhishthira loses everything, including Draupadi, whose honor is miraculously saved by Krishna during a public humiliation.
Draupadi
1931
8.0In a Rajput-style court, the king's younger wife, Taramati, is condemned for infidelity, and her son Chandrakumar is sent away. The king's elder wife has twins: Princess Chanda and the deceitful Jaisingh, who is later revealed to be an imposter. The romantic outlaw Rohil helps restore order to the kingdom, delighting Princess Chanda. It is eventually discovered that Rohil is the long-lost son of the good chief Sajjan Singh. The film features elaborate scenes of a tiger hunt and a cheetah taking away an infant Rohil.
My Man
1934
