Ganga Maiya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo (1962)

The first feature of the now thriving Bhojpuri cinema, the rhythmic and flowery Central Indian dialect of Hindi approximating Brijbhasha, the language associated with North Indian classical music. In this melodrama Sumitra (Kumkum) is married, according to the film’s publicity, ‘in the style to which all young women aspire’, only to find herself widowed soon after. A variety of villains include her father, the drunken Lakhan Singh, her father-in- law and other members of the village who see her as a harbinger of bad luck, but she eventually overcomes these obstacles and causes the village to revise its orthodox assumptions.