Poona Raided (1924)

This expensive historical, the most ambitious production of the Pune-based Deccan Pics.:is a seminal item in Marathi cinema's influential tradition later continued by Sarpotdar and inherited by Bhalji Pendharkar: the Right- wing valorisation of the 17th-C. Maratha emperor Shivaji. It was also the best-known directorial effort by one of the Marathi theatre's major playwrights, B.V. (Mama) Warerkar, whose play Satteche Gulam (1922), transformed the Marathi stage with the first full- blown instance of Ibsenite stage naturalism. This film retells the legendary episode, a favourite of numerous popular historians of Maratha glory, of Mughal emperor :Aurangzeb's (Sahasrabuddhe) attack on the fort city of Poona and of how Shivaji (Ketkar) repelled it. Although it shared the scale of e.g. Painter's Sinbagad (1923), it was probably made with greater awareness of the contemporary anti- imperialist metaphors of the historical genre and the ideological Hindu and Marathi- chauvinist dimensions of the era. Apart from Sarpotdar, who continued in this vein when he acquired Deccan, the other film-maker to launch his career was Sundarrao Nadkarni, appearing in a minor role.