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Wonderful Temples of India

A Christian take on 'Edenless' India, where heathens are unafraid of snakes, and build 'interesting' temples to their gods

Interest film 1916 6 mins Silent

Overview

The temples of 'Edenless' India (including some in what is now Sri Lanka) are seen here in 1916, including the Mogul city of Fatehpur Skiri in Uttar Pradesh, which inspired the detailing of Edwin Lutyens' New Delhi, and the layout of Le Corbusier's modernist Chandigarh in the 1950s. The film dwells on their exotic splendour, remarking (with civilised astonishment) on the 2000-year-old method of workers bringing stones by hand to build them.

The filmmaker seems amazed that Indians could build such temples, and (unironically) that slave labour is still used in 1916. Fatehpur Sikri remains one of India's most important architectural structures. Though the filmmaker says it was "abandoned to jackals", he does not mention that this abandonment was due to the exhausting of the water supply. The filmmaker seems as much enamoured of the film technology as what it can show. Using a slow exposure for ghostly effect, he marvels at the mile-long corridors, covered in carvings that are part of the city's architecture. Preti Taneja

Genres

Interest film

Country

Great Britain

Language

No Dialogue with English subtitles