SHREE KRISHNA JANMA (1918)
aka Shri Krishna Janma
Article 4448 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-12-2014
Directed by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke
Featuring Bhagirathibai, D.D. Dabke, Neelkanth
Country: India
What it is: Indian legend

The invocation of the child god Krishna takes place.

IMDB lists the length of this movie as 12 minutes, and that is the approximate length of the footage I have. However, I was informed that the actual length of the movie was much longer; it was about forty minutes long. Furthermore, not all of the footage I have has been necessarily established to be from that movie, though the first section is. This means that I’m really only covering a fragment of the movie, which is cheating a bit, but I’ve done it before. There are approximately three sections to this footage. The first has worshiping villagers calling from Krishna to come out of the river, which he does in the coils of a great snake. We than have a few encounters with him, including one where he harasses an enemy by appearing to him in duplicate forms. The second section has people paying obeisance to several devotees, which involves people leaving gifts to people standing on pedestals. The last section of the footage feels like it may be from a different film, but it is interesting in itself, and it seems to have its own storyline; a prince seems to be in the throes of religious ecstasy, and he is condemned to be executed by several methods, all of which he seems to miraculously survive. The footage ends abruptly at this point, so we don’t see the result of the last attempt. All in all, the footage was worth seeing, even if some of it may be from the wrong movie.