The ongoing Jagran Film Festival (JFF) at Siri Fort auditorium, New Delhi has a unique feature that has never been part of any major Film Festival in India. It presents the first ever retrospective of veteran actor Rishi Kapoor and screens his eight and a half films with another interesting story behind the unusual number.
In its opening-day interactive session, where at one end the organizers expressed their gratitude towards the well-known actor for agreeing to be a part of the festival, Kapoor too reciprocated with a similar gesture and thanked them for considering his films to be important enough for being featured in the reputed film festival.
In the actor’s master-class, hosted by renowned critic and editor of Mid-Day entertainment Mayank Shekhar, Kapoor himself accepted that in his first innings in the Hindi film industry, he was always considered to be an actor best suited for soft, romantic roles, as a lover-boy playing guitar and singing songs wearing (the famous) trendsetting sweaters. But it’s his second innings as a character artist that has actually forced people to acknowledge and praise him as an actor playing some unusual and unexpected roles different from his earlier image. In his direct conversation with the audience, he readily accepted that even after working for more than four decades in the industry, nobody ever had a retrospective of his films in any film festival in India and for the first time it’s being organized by the Jagran group featuring his 8½ films.
The story behind the strange figure was revealed by Mayank as he informed that while selecting Rishi Kapoor’s important films, the team first had 4, then 5 and then 8 films shortlisted representing his body of work. But then realized that they had actually missed the most important film of his career, MERA NAAM JOKER, his debut film, for which he had even won a National Award. However, since the film had a much longer length of around four hours, they decided to show only its first section featuring Rishi Kapoor in the lead playing the young Raj Kapoor. So that’s how it became eight and a half films in the festival, with 8 full-length films and one partial screening of MERA NAAM JOKER titled Glimpses of Rishi Kapoor.
The other films screened at the festival included CHANDNI, BOBBY, KAPOOR & SONS, AGNEEPATH and DO DOONI CHAAR. Though clips of AMAR AKBAR ANTHONY, HUM KISI SE KUM NAHIN and KARZ were also shared at the festival’s Facebook page, but these films were not to be found in the final schedule, may be due to some technical or any other reason not mentioned in the first day's master class session.
(The article also got featured in UC-News mobile app in July 2017)
