Achhut Kanya

• Report rights infringement
• published: 03 Jun 2013
• views: 44502

Achhut Kanya, 1936 Director: Franz Osten Music: Saraswati Devi Dialog and Song Lyrics: J.S. Kashyap Cast: Devika Rani, Ashok Kumar, Monorama, Anwar, Pramila, Kamta Prasad The translation was provided by Raja with help on the songs from Ava. The source VHS tape was from Muz. Thanks to you all. Without your help this project would not have been possible. No thanks at all to the Indian home video production companies who let a landmark film like this languish without a release. And even were it to be released on DVD it would be of horrible quality, because they just don't care about their film heritage. A circular story, told in flashback, in which eternal repetition is only interrupted by death in the form of a relentlessly linear railway engine. The film opens at a railway crossing where a man is about to kill his wife when the narrative spins into the past via a song. The central story is of the unhappy love affair between Kasturi, the Harijan (Untouchable) daughter of the railway level-crossing guard Dukhia, and Pratap, the Brahmin son of the grocer Mohan. At first, rumor and mob violence are deployed to lethal effect in order to maintain a 'traditional', oppressive morality. Later, when the main protagonists are about to conform and marry selected partners, rumor and maliciousness again intervene to trigger renewed violence until the on-rushing train of fate stops the strife. Some company called Sepl VintageMovies has taken this movie from my channel, reencoded it in bad aspect ratio (widescreen so everyone looks fat), put their nasty logo on it, uploaded it to their own channel, had ads plastered all over it, and claimed it as their own. This is an unscrupulous, sleazy, greedy, company that will do anything for the money they can collect from YouTube for being one of their 'partners'. I urge people not to visit their channel, watch their videos, click on their ads, or have anything at all to do with them. Their songs and movies have been taken from other channels with no credit given to the original uploaders for all the hard work that went into making the videos. Then there's Lehren which has tried to claim this film as their own three different times now so they can have ads placed around it and they can make money from my work. This is a public domain film they don't even own!