22nd June 1897

22nd June 1897 is a 1979 Marathi film, co-written by Shankar Nag and Nachiket Patwardhan and directed by the husband and wife team of Jayoo Patwardhan and Nachiket Patwardhan. The duo are also practising architects. It is based on the true life story of the assassination of British Government officers Rand ICS and Lt. Ayerst. The film has been included in the book One Hundred Indian Feature Films: An Annotated Filmography, a representative selection from the first Indian talkies to the then-present date (1988). The title of the film is the date of the assassination, 22 June 1897. It won the 1980 Indian Silver Lotus at the National Film Awards in two categories: Best film on National Integration and Art Direction. It also won the 1980 Maharashtra State awards for best film of the year and best director. The film has been included in the selected collection of Indian films and videos in the US Library of Congress. Most of the performers in the film then belonged to Theatre Academy, Pune.

The film is based on the true life events leading up to, and the consequences of, the assassination of Charles Walter Rand, Assistant Collector of Pune and Chairman of the Special Plague Committee, Pune, and British Army officer Lt Charles Egerton Ayerst. Ayerst was Rand's military escort on 22 June 1897 by the Chapekar brothers – Damodar Hari, Vasudev Hari and Balkrishna Hari and Mahadeo Vinayak Ranade, Khando Vishnu Sathe a school boy was charged as a co-conspirator and sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment.

The film was the directorial debut of Jayoo and Nachiket Patwardhan, commissioned by the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) on a shoestring Rupees 3.5 lakh budget. Jayoo Patwardhan scouted for locations in Wai and Pune for the period look, poring over scores of photographs obtained by her grandfather, and spending months researching the details. The film was shot entirely on locations in Pune, Wai and Mumbai in March and April 1979. The co-director considers the film "a solid piece of history with huge archival value". Vijay Tendulkar its dialogue writer considered that "the film is significant because it shows the way history needs to be treated in cinema – in a deglam manner where martyrs are also shown as human beings", and judged the effort to be stupendous given the tight budget and other limitations of the time. "The dialogues I wrote were brief and simple, just like the script demanded," felt Tendulkar.

Pune was visited by the pestilence of bubonic plague which took a heavy toll of life. But the plague had another, indirect and far reaching consequence on the politics of the country. The behaviour of the military which was called out to deal with the situation arising from the pestilence caused great indignation. On 22 June in 1897, British officer Charles Walter Rand Assistant Collector of Pune and Chairman of the Special Plague Committee, Pune, and British Army officer Lieutenant Charles Egerton Ayerst, were assassinated on the Ganeshkhind road, Pune, on their way back from a Government house party celebrating the Diamond Jubilee anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria. C. W. Rand of the ICS was appointed to take charge of the plague control measures and had successfully contained the epidemic; but his methods of evacuating the people, of fumigating their dwellings, and burning the contaminated articles, evoked tremendous hatred amongst certain sections of the society, which led to his assassination. The climax scene is the shooting, after the midnight party finished, the carriages started moving out of the Government House, one of the boys in that group watched from outside the gate. As Rand came out, he gave the signal. Another boy began running with the carriage. As he reached the spot where Damodar, Balkrishna and others were waiting, he shouted to them ‘Gondya ala re! (Gondya has come)’. Balkrishna jumped on the carriage and shot the occupant. But there was a mistake. It was Ayerst whom he had killed. They realized their mistake. When Rand’s carriage came to the spot, Damodar climbed on it and shot Rand. Ayerst was killed on the spot, and Rand died in hospital on 3 July 1897.

Cast :
Most of the performers in the film belonged to Theater Academy, Pune.
The cast of the film is as follows:
Damodar Chapekar: Prabhakar Patankar.
Vasudev Chapekar : Udayan Dixit.
Hari Vinayak Chapekar : Vasudev Palande.
Dwarka Hari Chapekar: Shanta Jog.
Daughters-in-law : Arundhatti Rao, Sujal Watve, Dipali Kulkarni.
Govindmama : Satish Khare.
Ranade : Sadanand Borse.
Apte : Shrikant Gadre.
Dutta Bhuskute : Suresh Bhasale.
Ganesh Dravid : Jairam Hardikar.
Ramchandra Dravid : Sanjiv Ambike.
Nilu Dravid : Vikas Deshpande.
Havaldar Rama Pandu : Mukund Chitale.
Walter Rand : John Irving.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak : Sadashiv Amrapurkar.
Inspector Brewin : Rod Gilbert.

Info :
Language - Marathi(Indian)
Video Size - 682 MB
Video Codec - XViD
Video Res - 640 x 480
Video Frame Rate - 25 fps 
Video Bitrate - 700 Kbps
Subtitles - English (Hardcoded)
Audio Codec - MP3
Channels - Stereo
Sample Rate - 44100 Hz @ 128 kbps
Length -  1 Hour 53 mins 53 secs

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