Niranjan Pal
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Niranjan Pal (August 17, 1889 – November 9, 1959) was a screenwriter and director in the Indian film industry in the silent and early talkie days. He was a close associate of Himanshu Rai and Franz Osten, with who he was a founding member of Bombay Talkies.
His father was the freedom fighter Bipin Chandra Pal, and he was briefly involved in the Indian freedom struggle during an association with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Madanlal Dhingra in London. By the late 1910s, he started writing and eventually wrote Light of Asia and Shiraz, both of which were performed on stage in London. Both were commercially successful and attracted the attention of German filmmaker Franz Osten, who made screen versions in India.
Following the successes of The Light of Asia and Shiraz, Pal moved back to India with his English wife, Lily, and son Colin Pal, and embarked on a career as the screenplay writer for Bombay Talkies. He also started directing films, and made among others Needle's Eye (1931), Pardesia (1932), and Chitthi (1941). His career as a director was however far less successful than his work as a screenwriter, in which role he wrote some of India's earliest blockbusters Achhut Kanya (1936), Jeevan Naiya (1936) and Jawani Ki Hawa (1935). Of these Achhut Kanya was the most popular, and continues to be a landmark film as it dealt with the subject of untouchability.
His family is in the film industry, son Colin Pal was a prominent journalist and grandson Deep Pal is a cinematographer. His autobiography "Aye Jibon: Such is life" won a National Award from the Indian Government in 2001.
[edit] References
pib.nic.in/prs/iffi2007/birth.pdf
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