Available to stream from 13 to 15 August 2024 on https://stummfilmtage.culturebase.org
This visually opulent film adaptation of the life and work of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was shot entirely on location in India with a predominantly local cast. THE LIGHT OF ASIA marked the beginning of a successful prolonged collaboration between the German director Franz Osten and the Indian lead actor and producer Himansu Rai. In Bonn, a rare 35mm print of the German version from the collection of the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation will be shown, while the restored English version, which was digitised by DFF in 2013, will be made available for streaming.
The film’s opening claim of authenticity and theethnographic gaze that follows are a careful construction, not only in regard to their conflicting aesthetic signals, simplicity and excess, but also in regard to the question of how the film defines Indianness and, of course, Indians. Who are these Indian players who are purportedly presenting this story? To begin with, they are not all just Indian. The female star of PREM SANYAS, who played the role of Buddhas’s wife Gopa, is credited as Seeta (Sita) Devi. Seeta Devi was the screen name created for this film for the thirteen-year-old Anglo-Indian Renée Smith, who also starred in Franz Osten’s two subsequent silent films, SHIRAZ (1928) and PRAPANSHA PASH (1929). She continued hersuccess in productions of the influential Madan family. However, since Devi did not speak Hindi, she was unable to continue her career in Hindi sound film. Like Devi, many of the early Indian female leads were Anglo-Indian (for example, Patience Cooper, another Madan star) or had been educated entirely in England (like Devika Rani) – the secondary literature outlines that there was less prejudice in Anglo-Indian circles against acting as a profession for women. In addition, Anglo-Indians represented what was described as the “upper crust” of colonial Indian society.
Veronika Fuechtner, in: The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema. Rochester 2010
