The Films Division was established in newly-independent India in 1948 to use the power of films for national development.
The nation's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the first I&B minister, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, took the lead in giving Films Division its first mandate. Thus, Films Division made films on the construction of large dams, power plants, steel mills, government work on all fronts and the history, culture and diversity of India.
In the absence of Doordarshan, India's own broadcasting channel, which was established a few decades later, these short films were screened in theatres across the country before the main show for the benefit of the masses.
The use of documentary films for communicating development initiatives by the Government was pioneered by the British documentary filmmaker, John Grierson who was the Director for Mass Communication at UNESCO in the 1940s.
Grierson promoted the idea of training people in the colonies in documentary filmmaking to empower them to tell the stories of government initiatives in their own words. The famous writer Mulk Raj Anand was among those who supported this idea and in 1949 said that the documentary film should be “recognised as the most important form of visual education in India.”
Films Division was given the fullest support by an enthusiastic government and by the mid-1960s, it was releasing three films per week and a weekly newsreel. It had a staff of 860 people with 19 directors and 14 newsreel cameramen across India.
According to scholar Peter Sutoris, author of the book, ‘Visions of Development: Films Division of India and the Imagination of Progress, 1948-75’, “For decades to come, FD would produce thousands of documentaries and newsreels that would reach as many as 25 million Indians a week.”