Gajanan Jagirdar (2 April 1907 – 13 August 1988) was a veteran Indian film director, screenwriter and actor. He worked in Hindi Cinema, also called Bollywood, as well as Marathi cinema. The period of 1942 to 1947, saw his rise as a film director with Prabhat Films.[1][2]
He was appointed as the first director (then principal) of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in 1960 which was known as Film Institute of India then. Jagirdar served as the director of the FTII for just over a year, from 1961 to 1962. He was associated with the Prabhat Film Company three decades before his FTII role, when the campus was the base of the Prabhat.
He became a well-known pedagogue applying the acting theories of Stanislavsky to the prevailing local conditions.
Gajanan Jagirdar was born on 2 April 1907 in Amravati, a city in Amravati district, which was a part of the erstwhile Bombay Presidency of British India. He started acting as a child actor in the amateur stage.[4] Gajanan was a teacher before joining the film industry.[5]
Film career
Gajanan began his film career in 1931 as a scenarist and assistant director in Prabhat Film Company and became a full-fledged film director only two years later in 1934.[6][7] His first Bollywood film was Sinhasan (1934) as a director.
Gajanan Jagirdar's role of Ramshastri in the movie Ramshastri (film) won him immense appreciation and popularity.[8]
^Rekha Menon (1963). Cultural Profiles: Calcutta. Santiniketan. International Cultural Centre. p. 117. Gajanan Jagirdar Gajanan Jagirdar, film producer, actor and director, was born in 1907 at Amraoti. He began his film career in 1931 as a scenarist and assistant director and became a full-fledged film director only two years later.
^Sanjit Narwekar; Raghuvir Kul; D. B. Samant (1995). Marathi Cinema: in retrospect. Maharashtra Film, Stage & Cultural Development Corporation Maharashtra Film, Stage & Cultural Development Corp. p. 66.
^Rekha Menon (1963). Cultural Profiles: Calcutta. Santiniketan. Inter-National Cultural Centre. p. 117. Gajanan Jagirdar for his role in the latter film he won the Best Actor of the Year citation from the Bengal Film Journalists Association. The same Association honoured him doubly in 1944 by citing him both as Best Actor of the Year and Best Director of the Year for his film Ram Shastrt.
^Indian Cinema. Directorate of Film Festivals, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. 1988. p. 89. Gajanan Jagirdar, the well-known and respected Marathi film producer and director and one-time actor in Hindi and Marathi films passed away in Bombay on August 13, 1988 after a heart attack at the age of 81
