Birendranath Sircar popularly known as B.N. Sircar, was honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 1971, for the year 1970.

The second son of Sir N.N. Sircar, the Advocate General of undivided Bengal, and a member of the Viceroy's Council. Birendranath, was a civil engineering with a degree to that effect from London University. He abandoned the safe and secure career of construction engineer to become a film producer.

Armed with a degree in engineering, B.N. Sircar began life as a contractor. It was while supervising the building of a cinema theatre that he became interested in films. So facinated was he, that he went ahead to construct his own cinema, 'Chitra,' now called 'Mitra', which was declared open, in December 1930 by Subhas Chandra Bose, better known as Netaji. Sircar built a second theatre in Central Calcutta which he named 'New Cinema' where Hindi Films were exclusively screened, meanwhile Chitra remained reserved for Bengali movies.

B.N. Sircar floated a production concern around the same time, International Film Craft, and under this banner he produced two silent films, Chashar Meye and Chor Kanta. With the advent of talkies, he began his own studio at Tollygunj called New Theatres Ltd., in 1931. New Theatres' first film was the Bengali talkie, Dena Paona released in 1931.

A doyen of film producers in Bengal, B.N. Sircar presided over the fortunes of New Theatres for 24 years, producing more than 150 films in various languages including Bengali, Hindi and Tamil. Puran Bhagat, Yahudi Ki Ladki, Chandidas, Devdas, Dhoop Chaon, Mukti, Vidhyapati, Street Singer, Badi Didi and Presient were the notable Hindi Versions of the bi-linguals which were also made in Bengali. Bakul (1955) was his last film.

Churning out almost an uninterrupted line of quality films which were also success was indeed phenomenal task undertaken by New Theatres, one should attribute to the rate enterpreneural abilities of its founder Birendranath Sircar 91901-1980).

New Theatres films were often based on well-known Bengali novels by Bankimchandra. Rabindranath, and Saratchandra. Alternatively, popular novelists were commissioned to write stories for films. Stories of a good number of New Theatres' hits' were written by Sailajananda Mukhopadhyay, including Deshar Mati (1938), Jiban Maran (1939) and Daktar (1940). Benoy Chatterjee who it needs to be stated, only wrote for films, wrote the stories of highly successful N. T. films : Pratisruti (1941), Parichay (1941) and Wapas (1943). One must take note of the fact that New Theatres films, fulfilled the primary objective of entertainment, and at the same time concerned itself with a social or humanitarian theme.

Nearly four decades have passed since the films of the New Theatres Ltd. were released, yet to film buffs, the magic of the name. New Theatres' remains alive. Indeed, to elder generations of Bengalis, New Theatres is an institution and like Rabindranath, the name with which they became familiar from childhood. Like the roaring lion of the Metro GoldwynMayer Ltd. (MM), the elephant on New Theatres' logo came to be regarded as the hallmark of quality, and the elephant is fondly remembered even today.

B.N. Sircar's empire introduced personalities of the stature of P.C. Barua, Bimal Roy, Debaki Bose, Leela Desai, Phani Majumdar, Timir Baran, Umashashi, Nitin Bose, K.. Saigal, Pankaj Mullick, Nemo, Sisir Kumar Bhaduri and Jamuna, all of whom later earned all India fame, under the banner of New Theatres. Among his technical achievements were the bringing of sound to Calcutta for Bengali films, and the introduction of the playback system. The elephant logo of New Theatres acted as a magnet to draw crowds throughout the country.

B.N. Sircar had held various responsible position in several important film bodies set up by the Government as well as the industry. He was successive Presient of the BMPA, Presient of Film Federation of India, member of Central Film Censor Board, Chairman of Film Consulative Committee set up by West Bengal Government, member of Joint Advisory Committee of Film and TV Institute and National Film Archives of India. A founder member of Children's Film Society. Shri Sircar was also associated with the Government of India Film Enquiry Committee in 1949 and honoured with Padmabhushan in 1971 by Government of India.

B.N. Sircar's Filmography