Chitrahaar


Chitrahaar is a television program on DD National featuring song clips from Bollywood films. It was widely watched in the 1980s and 1990s. The word literally means 'a garland of pictures', or more liberally, 'a story of pictures'. It airs for half an hour every Wednesday in prime-time, where the videos of the latest songs in Hindi film music are televised.

History

Chitrahaar first aired in 1982, and was widely watched in the 1980s and 1990s. It was popular even outside India, especially in places like the Middle East or the United States, which had a large number of people of Indian origin.
In 1997, both Chitrahaar and Rangoli went back to private producers, with Chitrahaar going to Amit Khanna of Plus Channel and Rangoli to Dheeraj Kumar of Creative Eye.
In 2010, Chitrahaar started using same language subtitling, where Hindi subtitles of the song's lyrics scroll across the screen. The idea behind SLS is that people who are just learning to read would benefit by reading lyrics of the songs they are listening to and watching. It is an engaging way to promote literacy, especially in villages. This initiative of Doordarshan has been technically supported by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.