Colour, Scope, and the Long Romance with Place: How Indian Cinema Learned to Dazzle

Colour, Scope, and the Long Romance with Place: How Indian Cinema Learned to Dazzle

Cinema in India did not turn technicolor overnight. It took experiments, failures, experiments again, economic gambits, changing audience appetites, a star system that adapted, the diffusion of processing labs and prints, improvements in theatres — and an irresistible hunger for images of place. From the grainy experiments of the 1930s to the widescreen epics and foreign-location musicals of the 1960s and 1970s, Indian filmmakers gradually learned how to use colour, scope and place to create cinematic spectacle that could stand as a mass event.

This essay recounts the technical, economic and cultural story in full: the first colour experiments, the slow diffusion of different colour stocks, the arrival and trials of CinemaScope and 70 mm, the strategic use of Kashmir and foreign cities, the star stories (Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor), regional adoption, preservation headaches, and the lasting legacy. I include the films, dates and technical details we discussed earlier; where the historical record is ambiguous I explain the caveats.

 

1. First experiments: Sairandhri (1933) and Kisan Kanya (1937)

Colour’s story in India starts not with a single triumphant leap but with experimental attempts — and humility when things went wrong.

• Sairandhri (1933) — V. Shantaram’s early experiment — was shot with colour processes in mind and prints were made abroad (Germany). The results were problematic: contemporary accounts call the colour “garish” and the film was ultimately released in black-and-white. Sairandhri shows that technical possibility (sending film abroad for colour processing) didn’t automatically yield usable colour aesthetics. The film remains an instructive technical cautionary tale: the chemistry of colour printing and the look of colour had to be learned, not merely purchased.
• Kisan Kanya (1937) — produced by Ardeshir Irani and directed by Moti B. Gidwani, using Cinecolor, is widely credited as the first indigenously produced colour feature in India. That matters: Kisan Kanya marks the first time the Indian film industry attempted to produce a colour film domestically rather than merely relying on foreign processing. Yet even this early milestone did not trigger an immediate rush of colour films.

Together these films illustrate two essential points: (a) colour required the right materials and right processing/artistry, and (b) early adoption was patchy because of cost, expertise, and the industry’s overall priorities.

 

2. Colour stocks and processes: how Eastmancolor, Gevacolor, Technicolor and ORWO shaped the look — and cost

Over the 1940s–1960s several film stocks and print processes circulated in India, each with its own look, price and conservation idiosyncrasies:

• Technicolor — expensive, but yielded vivid and stable colour. Some high-profile Indian efforts (e.g., Sohrab Modi’s big historical musical Jhansi Ki Rani (1953)) used or claimed Technicolor processing as a prestige statement. Large historic productions sometimes sought Technicolor prints for important markets, though full-fledged Technicolor shooting/processing was rare and costly. Sohrab Modi’s Technicolor gamble on Jhansi Ki Rani was ambitious — praised for visual richness, but commercially disastrous, showing that spectacle alone did not guarantee success.
• Eastmancolor — became the common commercial colour stock by the 1950s–60s. It was relatively cheaper and easier to handle than Technicolor, and many mainstream Hindi and regional films used Eastmancolor for full features or for specific song sequences. Eastmancolor’s increasing availability is central to the spread of colour across industries.
• Gevacolor, ORWO, Cinecolor — lesser-used stocks were employed in some regional or lower-budget films or for partial-colour sequences. For example, some South Indian films experimented with Gevacolor; Kallichellamma in Malayalam is cited as using ORWO colour processes for its look.

Different stocks produced different hues and tended to age differently — a reason many early colour films today show extensive fading and restoration challenges.

3. Widescreen and large format: CinemaScope (1959) and 70 mm (mid-1960s)

Two related technical revolutions reshaped composition and scale.

• CinemaScope arrived in India with Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) directed by Guru Dutt and photographed by V. K. Murthy. The film is important technically — India’s first CinemaScope film — but also historically, because it shows the hazards of being ahead of the market. Kaagaz Ke Phool, despite its technical innovation and later critical acclaim, bombed financially on release. The lesson: widescreen aesthetics had to be married to popular taste and distribution realities.
• 70 mm large-format prints and six-track stereophonic sound were used in India mainly as prestige and event tools. The first major Indian film to be released in 70 mm was Around the World (1967) (Raj Kapoor) — though it was shot on 35 mm and then blown up to 70 mm for limited, premium prints (only a few 70 mm prints were struck initially). That “70 mm” label was often as much a marketing tool as a technical fact during the first decades. Sholay (1975) later became famous for its 70 mm release (a blow-up), wide release and epic scale — and its massive commercial success helped normalize widescreen spectacle for mass audiences.

Why these formats mattered: wider frames and larger formats make landscapes, group compositions and panoramic vistas more expressive — essential when filmmakers wanted to showcase the Swiss Alps, Kashmiri valleys, Paris streets, or sprawling Indian terrains. Widescreen multiplied the effect of colour.

4. Stars & colour: who embraced it early (and why)

The star system affected the adoption of colour in interesting, non-linear ways.

• Ardeshir Irani & Moti B. Gidwani — pioneers who put colour on the map with Kisan Kanya (1937).
• V. Shantaram — an early experimenter with Sairandhri (1933), showing artistic curiosity.
• Sohrab Modi — invested in Technicolor with Jhansi Ki Rani (1953), a costly gamble that did not recoup — a caution on colour-plus-scale risk.
• Dilip Kumar — had a colour connection as early as the 1950s (films like Aan (1952) have been cited in some records as early uses of colour prints/Technicolor processing), but the record shows the transition for older stars was uneven — early appearances in colour did occur, sometimes in partial colour prints or special sequences. (Caveat: “first colour film” claims for older stars often require context — partial colour, select prints, or later reissues sometimes complicate the claim.)
• Raj Kapoor — while a major star throughout the 1950s, his first big immersion in colour and foreign location spectacle came with Sangam (1964); later he used widescreen/70 mm packaging for travel spectacles such as Around the World (1967).
• Dev Anand — his landmark colour film Guide (1965) marks a mid-1960s turn to high-quality colour projects for the star, although he had earlier films and colour sequences before.
• Shammi Kapoor — a somewhat younger, more “youth-image” star, was an early beneficiary of colour’s appeal: Junglee (1961) (Eastmancolor) helped recast him as the exuberant, modern romantic lead. His early colour success illustrates that type of film (songs, youth romance) often determined early colour casting more than an actor’s seniority.

In short: stars’ adoption of colour depended not just on age or seniority but on the kinds of projects producers chose to mount — musicals, youth romances and travel extravaganzas were quick to use colour because colour amplified their commercial value.

5. The geography of spectacle: Kashmir, Switzerland, Tokyo, London — and how place became a selling point

Colour changed how filmmakers used place.

• Kashmir became emblematic: songs and romantic scenes shot on Dal Lake, Gulmarg and Pahalgam in lush colour transformed Kashmir into Bollywood’s go-to romantic landscape. Films like Kashmir Ki Kali (1964) and many songs in the 1960s–70s cemented Kashmir in the popular imagination as romantic, exotic and scenic. Colour accentuated the blue lakes, emerald valleys and snow — things black-and-white could not sell in the same way.
• Switzerland and Europe — as travel became cinematic spectacle, filmmakers routinely shot songs and sequences in Switzerland and other European locations. Sangam (1964) is a landmark: a major Hindi film shot largely in London, Paris and Switzerland. Around the World (1967) used its premise to string together many foreign locales. An Evening in Paris (1967) and Love in Tokyo (1966) used foreign cities as glossy, aspirational backdrops — sometimes the film functions like a travelogue more than a social realist drama. Producers consciously used foreign settings to give Indian audiences images of modernity and cosmopolitan escape in the pre-TV, pre-budget-travel era.
• Other Indian locations gained new cinematic value once colour was common. Rajasthan’s palaces, desert dunes and fort hues looked grand in colour; hill stations (Ooty, Manali, Shimla) and southern tea-garden landscapes (Ooty, the Western Ghats) gained popularity for romantic sequences; beaches and coastal towns (Goa) emerged as youth-oriented cinematic playgrounds later. The palette expansion — greens, saffrons, turquoise waters and sandstone gold — changed what filmmakers considered visually desirable.

Thus, colour did not simply beautify films — it recalibrated the nation’s cinematic geography.

The arrival of colour and widescreen formats in Indian cinema provoked excitement, experimentation, and cautious calculation among the movie fraternity. Directors and cinematographers, in particular, saw these technologies as opportunities to expand their visual vocabulary. Guru Dutt, who directed India’s first CinemaScope film Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), viewed the wider frame as a canvas for elaborate compositions and immersive storytelling, while cinematographer V.K. Murthy famously exploited light and shadow in the widescreen format to create visually poetic sequences. Industry insiders recall that for filmmakers of this era, colour and widescreen were tools to elevate films from narrative storytelling to “visual spectacle,” allowing audiences to experience India and the world in new ways. Actors responded differently. Senior stars like Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand approached colour cautiously; their initial colour films were selective, with producers wary of the costs. Meanwhile, younger actors like Shammi Kapoor embraced colour wholeheartedly. His Junglee (1961) used Eastmancolor to emphasize exuberance and romantic appeal, transforming him into a youthful, modern icon. Similarly, Raj Kapoor leveraged colour in films such as Sangam (1964) to dramatize foreign locales, enhancing his star persona through visually aspirational narratives. Producers faced a double-edged sword: colour and widescreen could attract audiences and justify higher ticket prices, but they also dramatically increased budgets. Sohrab Modi’s Jhansi Ki Rani (1953) exemplifies this risk — an early Technicolor spectacle praised for visual quality but commercially unsuccessful, leaving a cautionary imprint on the industry. Many producers therefore limited colour sequences to songs or high-profile segments until the financial viability of full-length colour films was proven in the mid-1960s. Overall, the fraternity’s reaction was a mix of fascination and pragmatism. Directors and cinematographers championed colour and widescreen for aesthetic expansion, actors navigated image and typecasting in the new visual medium, and producers balanced spectacle with economic risk. By the late 1960s, widespread adoption had occurred, with films like Around the World (1967) and Sholay (1975) exemplifying the mainstream embrace of colour, scope, and location-driven spectacle.

 

6. Examples of spectacle films that combined colour + widescreen/70 mm + location (Hindi & regional)

We assembled a working list across languages to show how widespread the trend was. A selection:

Hindi / Bollywood highlights

• Kisan Kanya (1937) — first indigenous colour film (Cinecolor).
• Sairandhri (1933) — early experiment (processed abroad; released as B/W).
• Jhansi Ki Rani (1953) — Sohrab Modi’s Technicolor spectacle (costly; commercial failure).
• Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) — India’s first CinemaScope (artistically daring; box-office failure).
• Junglee (1961) — Shammi Kapoor’s Eastmancolor film with Kashmir sequences and the famous “Yahoo!” moment.
• Kashmir Ki Kali (1964) — helped cinematicize Kashmir as romantic locale.
• Sangam (1964) — Raj Kapoor; shot largely abroad (London, Paris, Switzerland) in colour.
• Guide (1965) — Dev Anand in a major colour film; part of the mid-1960s colour wave.
• Love in Tokyo (1966), An Evening in Paris (1967) — films that explicitly used foreign cities as spectacle.
• Around the World (1967) — first Indian film released in 70 mm (limited prints; blow-up from 35 mm).
• Sholay (1975) — 70 mm release (blow-up), widescreen spectacle with extensive exterior shooting (Ramanagara), whose massive success normalized widescreen spectacle.

Regional highlights (showing diffusion)

• Veerapandiya Kattabomman (1959) — early Tamil film in Technicolor (regional experimentation with colour).
• Kandam Becha Kottu (1961) — first full-length colour Malayalam film (regional first).
• Chemmeen (1965) — important Malayalam film in Eastmancolor.
• Amarashilpi Jakanachari (1964) — first full-length colour Kannada film (Eastmancolor).
• Sivandha Mann (1969) — Tamil film that filmed abroad (Switzerland, France, Alps) — rare regional foreign shoot.
• Thillana Mohanambal (1968) — Tamil Eastmancolor classic.
• Gujarati cinema’s Liludi Dharati (1968) is noted as one of the first Gujarati colour films.

Across regional cinemas, colour adoption came in fits and starts; widescreen and 70 mm were rarer outside the bigger Hindi and South Indian industries because of cost and distribution realities.

7. Economics, foreign-exchange control and logistics: why foreign location shoots were selective

Shooting abroad was expensive and involved practical constraints in the 1950s–1960s:

• Foreign-exchange controls and permits meant producers needed to justify dollar spending. As a result, producers often limited overseas shooting to a few songs or highlight sequences rather than entire films. Sangam was notable precisely because it represented a more extensive foreign shoot in an era when such spending was unusual.
• Logistics (moving cast and crew, securing locations, local permits and labs) made foreign shoots both costly and complicated. That’s why many films used studio sets, or shot only on location for pivotal sequences and used stock footage or local stand-ins for the rest.
• Risk management: given high costs, producers expected that the visual novelty would pay off at the box office; failures (e.g., some Technicolor historicals) discouraged imitation and made overseas shoots a calculated risk.

8. Exhibition realities: why not everyone saw the widescreen/colour effect

Technologies like CinemaScope and 70 mm required compatible projection equipment (anamorphic lenses or 70 mm projectors) and multi-channel sound systems. Many cinemas — especially in smaller towns — did not have such upgrades. Thus:

• Unequal access: Urban, metropolitan audiences saw the technical benefits first; rural or smaller-town audiences often saw standard 35 mm prints without stereophonic sound.
• Limited 70 mm prints: For prestige, producers struck only a handful of 70 mm prints for big urban centres; e.g., Around the World initially circulated very few 70 mm prints. This constrained the reach of large-format spectacle.
• Theatre upgrades were gradual: only after repeated hits and the demonstrated box-office value did more exhibitors invest in widescreen/70 mm projection and stereo sound.

The upshot: the spectacle economy worked unevenly, privileging urban, wealthier movie-going publics at first.

When colour films and widescreen formats first arrived in Indian cinema — with projects like Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) opening the door for CinemaScope, and later colourful, location-rich films like Sangam (1964) showing foreign landscapes — audience reaction was a mixture of fascination, novelty-driven curiosity, and, sometimes, ambivalence. For many viewers, seeing Indian films in colour or in a wider frame must have felt like stepping into a new world. Widescreen gave directors room to show panoramic cityscapes, snow-clad mountains, foreign streets — settings that 35 mm black-and-white simply could not render with the same impact. Colour added emotional depth, vibrancy, and realism; for the first time, costume hues, location tones, daylight, sunsets, lakes, snow — all became part of the cinematic mood. The combination of colour, widescreen, and exotic locales turned cinema into a kind of visual travelogue — a window to places audiences could only dream of. However, the response was not uniformly ecstatic. Cinema-goers in the late 1950s and early 1960s often went to theatres where projection equipment was still basic, sound was mono, and prints may have degraded — meaning the “full effect” of widescreen or colour was experienced only by a fraction of audiences. The result: some films with technical ambition flopped or failed to draw large crowds — their novelty not enough to overcome narrative or distribution limitations. For example, despite being India’s first CinemaScope film, Kaagaz Ke Phool reportedly “bombed” at the box office, reflecting that audiences sometimes resisted or failed to appreciate formal innovation unmoored from familiar storytelling. Later generations — especially younger viewers — have looked back more fondly on early colour-films and widescreen spectacles. Contemporary studies of “colorization” of B&W classics show that many youthful audiences express strong preference for colour versions over originals — a testament to how colour remains emotionally compelling, especially when black-and-white seems dated. In effect: audiences reacted to colour and widescreen not as a uniform wave, but in waves — initial curiosity, selective appreciation (urban cinemagoers, better theatres), occasional rejection when story or context didn’t match the spectacle — and over time, growing acceptance. By the late 1960s–1970s, spectacle films with colour, exotic locations and widescreen had carved a stable place in popular cinema — shaping expectations, star-images, and even the architecture of theatres themselves.

 

9. Preservation and the peril of colour

Many early colour films have not aged well. Reasons:

• Colour fading: Early colour stocks — especially some Eastmancolor or lesser brands used in regional films — are prone to dye fading over decades. This makes restoration costly and sometimes impossible.
• Print scarcity: Many films had few release prints to begin with (especially 70 mm prints). When prints were worn out or destroyed, the visual record shrank.
• Archival neglect: In mid-20th century India, formal, systematic film archiving was nascent; many original negatives, interpositives or well-preserved color elements were lost. This complicates modern study and restoration. Restorations that have been done (by NFAI, private foundations, labs and rights holders) are precious but incomplete.

Consequently, the visual splendour we remember from the 1960s–70s often survives only in degraded copies or in restored fragments — an archival urgency that film historians and restoration bodies keep warning about.

10. Anecdotes, human stories and instructive failures

Here are some interesting ones:

• Ardeshir Irani — from Alam Ara (India’s first talkie) to Kisan Kanya, Irani was an entrepreneur who repeatedly tried to use new technology to expand cinema’s reach. His early colour venture shows how entrepreneurial drive met technical hurdles.
• V. Shantaram and Sairandhri (1933) — an artist’s early reach for colour that misfired; a lesson that artistic vision required technical mastery.
• Sohrab Modi’s Jhansi Ki Rani (1953) — a Technicolor spectacle that bankrupted the producer; a reminder that scale + colour could bankrupt even established houses.
• Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) — greatest technical first, commercial flop; later reappraised as masterpiece. V. K. Murthy’s CinemaScope photography is often celebrated retrospectively.
• Shammi Kapoor’s Junglee (1961) — early use of Eastmancolor and Kashmir sequences to reinvent a star’s image: music + colour + location = star rebranding.
• Sangam (1964) — Raj Kapoor’s bold foreign shoot and colour gamble that paid commercial dividends and set a new pattern.
• An Evening in Paris (1967), Love in Tokyo (1966) — part film, part travelogue; they demonstrate how films were made as vicarious travel for Indian audiences.
• Around the World (1967) — first significant 70 mm release in India (limited prints), demonstrating the prestige play of large format.
• Sholay (1975) — not the first 70 mm film, but the box-office titan that made widescreen spectacle mass-market viable across India.

These anecdotes emphasize two final truths: (1) technical innovation was often spearheaded by ambitious individuals and studios willing to gamble; (2) spectacular format and location did not guarantee box-office success unless accompanied by a story and audience resonance.

11. Regional cinema: colour adoption and partial experimentation

While Bollywood (Hindi) films dominated discussion of foreign locations and large format spectacle, regional industries, especially in South India and Kerala, were early adopters of colour as well:

• Tamil — films like Veerapandiya Kattabomman (1959) entered the Technicolor conversation; Thillana Mohanambal (1968) is a memorable Eastmancolor classic. Sivandha Mann (1969) filmed sequences in Europe (Switzerland, Alps) — a regional example of foreign location shooting.
• Malayalam — Kandam Becha Kottu (1961) is cited as the first full-length Malayalam colour film; Chemmeen (1965) was a high-profile Eastmancolor film.
• Kannada — Amarashilpi Jakanachari (1964) is cited as one of the first full colour Kannada films.
• Gujarati — Liludi Dharati (1968) is cited among the earliest Gujarati colour films.

But widescreen/70 mm and multi-location foreign shooting remained less common in regional industries because of smaller budgets, limited nationwide distribution networks, and the complexity of obtaining large format prints.

12. How the combination changed cinematic grammar

Colour, widescreen and location shooting together changed film grammar in concrete ways:

• Song sequences: became opportunities for location travelogue; costume and production designers leveraged colour for visual pop.
• Framing & composition: widescreen allowed for panoramic establishing shots, choreography framed in long takes, and staging that was impossible in cramped studio frames.
• Sound design & eventization: 70 mm releases with stereophonic sound converted some films into “cinematic events” — an experience beyond everyday filmgoing.
• Marketing & identity: “shot in Switzerland,” “70 mm release” and “Technicolor” became marketing hooks that could command premium ticket prices or attract urban curiosity.

13. Preservation, historiography and the duty to remember

Because many early colour prints decayed and because widescreen 70 mm prints were few, restoring this chapter of cinematic history is a challenge. Institutions such as national film archives, Film Heritage Foundation and private restoration labs have worked to save and restore key titles — but the work is expensive, time-consuming and incomplete. The fragility of print stock and past archival neglect means our picture of the era is still uneven and subject to loss.

How today’s critics, historians & film‑world view the “Colour + Scope + Spectacle” era Many among the current film fraternity and critics regard the transition to colour and widescreen as a pivotal, transformative era — one where Indian cinema discovered its ambition to dazzle. As one recent article describing the history of Indian cinema puts it: the shift from “black‑and‑white to colour” marked a technological leap that “expanded cinematic vocabulary” for Indian filmmakers. In retrospective reviews, films like Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) — the first Hindi CinemaScope film — are lauded not only for their melancholic themes but for their technical daring. As a millennial reviewer wrote: even if the film failed on release, on re‑watch it becomes “a canvas of light, framing, despair” that feels modern even today. The Indian Express That retrospective reinvestment in value shows how critics now regard technical risk-taking as part of a film’s lasting legacy — not just its box‑office tally. Similarly, when historians and film‑heritage advocates discuss early colour films like Kisan Kanya (1937), they emphasize its historic importance. As one recent 2025 article noted: “Kisan Kanya remains the landmark that introduced indigenous colour to Indian cinema.” There is also a critical recognition of the unevenness and hardship of that transition. Many note that early colour‑ or widescreen‑films often flopped — not for lack of aesthetics, but because distribution, audience readiness and theatre‑infrastructure lagged. The story of ambitious films failing (e.g. early widescreen experiments or early colour blockbusters) is cited as a lesson in the perils of “style over substance.” Film‑historians today rarely celebrate every old colour film blindly: instead, they parse success along three axes — technical ambition, narrative strength, and cultural resonance. In that sense, some films from the 1960s–70s are re‑evaluated as “ahead of their time,” while others are seen as “glorious failures” whose ambition outstripped their storytelling or market viability. Moreover, the legacy of that era continues via restoration efforts. When classic films are restored — colour corrected, re‑printed or digitized — many in the industry emphasize how the original “colour‑space‑scope” aesthetic still has power. For instance, new screenings of black‑and‑white classics or CinemaScope films to modern audiences (now accustomed to HDTV / digital colour) highlight nostalgia, craft and archival value. Critics use them to discuss how aesthetics of framing, mise‑en‑scene and colour‑design shaped the evolution of Indian cinematic grammar. In summary: modern film critics, historians and filmmakers tend to view the mid‑20th century colour + widescreen period as a foundational, experimental, and aspirational phase. They honour its innovators — colour‑pioneers, technical risk‑takers, studios willing to invest — even while acknowledging its failures and technical limitations. Its legacy is not unconditional romanticism, but a nuanced recognition that this was where Indian cinema first dared to dream big, visually and technically.

 

14. Final reflections: the long arc from technology to cultural imagination

The move from monochrome studio films to a world of colour, scope and location was gradual, experimental and expensive. It required pioneers — Ardeshir Irani, V. Shantaram, Guru Dutt, Sohrab Modi, Raj Kapoor and others — to risk aesthetics and balance sheets. It required new film-stocks and lab practices (Eastmancolor, Technicolor, Gevacolor, ORWO), widescreen lenses and the spectacle of 70 mm. It required theatre owners to invest in projection and sound upgrades. And it required audiences ready for spectacle.

In the end, the payoff was more than visual: these films rewired the national imagination. They offered arm-chair travel to Europe, snow-scapes in Kashmir, palaces in Rajasthan, beaches in Goa — all made more desirable by colour and scope. That visual archive shaped tourism, star personas, costume and fashion trends, and how Indians thought of modernity and cosmopolitan life decades before satellite television or social media delivered similar imagery.

Colour, scope and place together turned Indian cinema into a boundless theater of desire — an industry that could show viewers where they had never been, and make them long to go. That legacy — aesthetic, technical, economic and cultural — endures in the widescreen spectacles of today.

References & sources

(Representative and relevant to the facts above — a mixture of institutional and accessible sources)

• Film pages & histories: entries on Kisan Kanya, Sairandhri, Kagaz Ke Phool, Sangam, Around the World (1967), Junglee, Kashmir Ki Kali, An Evening in Paris, Love in Tokyo, Sholay, Jhansi Ki Rani, Guide — (widely available across film encyclopedias and pages such as Wikipedia and film-history articles).
• Technical/historical overviews: National Film Archive of India (NFAI) materials and Film Heritage Foundation pieces on film preservation and colour stocks.
• Retrospectives & scholarly essays on CinemaScope and widescreen in India; technical writeups on 70 mm releases and stereophonic sound (archival blog essays and film historian retrospectives).
• Regional cinema histories (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Gujarati) for early colour firsts: industry histories and language-specific film encyclopedias.
• Contemporary press coverage and retrospectives in Times of India, Hindustan Times, and other Indian newspapers that covered the spectacle films of the 1960s–1970s.