Showing posts with label RK Films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RK Films. Show all posts
Ranbir Kapoor set to reimagine his grandfather Raj Kapoor’s Chori Chori; will co-star Deepika Padukone?
9:02 AM
Sources say Ranbir Kapoor is set to reimagine his grandfather Raj Kapoor’s ‘Chori Chori’ as he revives RK Films, to star opposite Deepika Padukone
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; November 29, 2025)
In October, mid-day had reported that Ranbir Kapoor is planning to revive the legacy studio, RK Films, which was founded by late filmmaker and his grandfather Raj Kapoor (Jeena yahan, marna yahan, Oct 31). Now, the chatter is that Ranbir has zeroed in on the first film under the banner. Rumours suggest that the actor will reunite with Deepika Padukone for a contemporary reimagining of ‘Chori Chori’ (1956).
Revisiting ‘Chori Chori’, one of the many iconic movies fronted by the legendary actor and filmmaker, would serve as the perfect way to restart the journey of RK Films.
An industry insider says, “There is a lot of excitement in Ranbir’s camp. He wants the RK Films’ comeback movie to feel like something his grandfather would have made, only told in today’s language.”
Ranbir has apparently given the directorial reins to his close friend Ayan Mukerji. The insider adds, “Ayan has been developing the script for months. He doesn’t want to rush it since it’s a prestige project.”
Murmurs suggest that the love story will be mounted on a big canvas, with a chunk shot in international locations. “It’s possible that the announcement regarding the studio’s revival will be made as early as December 14, which is Raj saab’s birthday. The movie, however, has yet to take concrete shape,” adds the source.
Anees Bazmee recalls first job at RK Studios, earned Rs 300
9:50 AM
(From left) Anees Bazmee with Rishi Kapoor during the shoot of Prem Rog
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 director Anees Bazmee on working with the showman of Indian cinema, Raj Kapoor. He started working there at the age of 16 and would take four buses to reach the studios in Chembur
Komal RJ Panchal (MID-DAY; July 25, 2025)
Most of us remember our first jobs vividly. For Anees Bazmee, his first job remains hallowed ground, and for good reason. The director worked with none other than late Raj Kapoor at the legendary RK Studios in Chembur. The mere recollection of his old self, all of 16, serving as an assistant director at the studio between 1978 and 1981, brings a smile to his face.
“Every day I’d take a bus from Malvani where I lived, to Malad station, then another to Vile Parle, where my colleague K K Singh lived. He later wrote Ram Teri Ganga Maili [1985].” From there, the two would travel together to Chembur. A long commute certainly. “Four buses in total, and one-and-a-half hours, one way,” he broke it down, before saying, “But we never thought of it as difficult. We were working at RK Studios. That was everything.”
The energy was unmatched, remembered the Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 (2024) director. The reporting time was 10.30 am sharp. Pack-up time, in contrast, was never fixed. It could be 6 or 7 pm, or past midnight. Did they mind the long hours? Absolutely not. “RK Studios felt like home. There were four studio floors, and every day, shoots, rehearsals, and prep would be going on. It was like a creative mela.”
The biggest incentive of being a part of this mela? Seeing the showman of Indian cinema, up-close and in action. Bazmee recalled, “When you entered, Raj Kapoor’s office was to the left. He sat in a way that he could see everyone who came in or went out. So, we were always aware that Raj Kapoor was watching.”
Working at one of Hindi cinema’s biggest studios, that too under the tutelage of the legendary filmmaker, was not only an enriching experience, but it also left him with a treasure trove of stories. The director recounted an incident, where Singh and he were writing the censor script of a film. “It was well past midnight. Suddenly a voice boomed, ‘Who’s there?’ Raj Kapoor had come to check who was still working. We told him what we were doing, and he simply said, ‘Chalo’. At 3 am, he took us to his house, woke everyone up, fed us, and sat with us. That was the kind of man he was.”
The four years he spent at RK Studios went by in a flash. Bazmee may have joined at a meagre salary of R300, but the job felt priceless. “We learned so much about films, discipline, and loyalty. Dabbu sir [Randhir Kapoor] and Chimpu [Rajiv Kapoor] would come often. Chintu [Rishi Kapoor] was a big star by then. Raj Kapoor came every single day. He had a private resting space we called ‘the den’.”
The studio canteen, too, holds special memories. For months, he ate dal and roti as that was all he could afford. “On seeing that, Chimpu got emotional and told the canteen manager, ‘Whatever KK and Anees eat, put it on my tab.’ The very next day, KK went all out, ordering chicken, fish, and parathas. I told him not to overdo it, but he said, ‘Let me enjoy today’,” Bazmee laughed.
In 2019, the studio was sold, thus bringing the curtains down on the place that witnessed the making of classics like Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955), and brought the industry together for the Kapoors’ famous Ganesh Chaturthi festivities over the decades. Bazmee said, “When RK Studios shut down, it felt like my house had been sold. Even now, when I pass by this space it makes me very emotional.”
Anees Bazmee (in a hat) in the company of Rishi Kapoor and Raj Kapoor at RK Studios
From Umrao Jaan to Pakeezah, how an archive frames Bollywood history
8:30 AM
From 1945, Kamat Foto Flash has been chronicling Hindi cinema’s most iconic movies through stills
Shruti Sonal (THE TIMES OF INDIA; July 8, 2025)
When Muzaffar Ali’s ‘Umrao Jaan’ released in 1981, its poetic storytelling, the enigmatic Rekha, Asha Bhosle’s unforgettable songs, and the stunning set and costume design made it an instant classic. Over 40 years later, Ali, Rekha, and Bhosle reunited in Mumbai to celebrate the release of the film’s beautifully restored 4K version in theatres.
Alongside the remastered film, Ali also launched a limited-edition coffee table book with photography stills that captured behind-the-scenes of the film’s making. “My background in advertising and painting has made me aware of the power that images hold. I thought a book would help in keeping the film’s stills zinda (alive) for a long time, along with the different layers of truth that go behind a single scene in the film,” Ali says.
To collect the stills for the book, Ali called up Neha Kamat, daughter of Vidyadhar, the film’s official photographer who captured not only the tragic beauty of Rekha but also the pre-colonial world the film evoked. The archive yielded not only the stills he sought, but also a treasure trove of memories from the shoot— like a black-and-white image of Ali by a lake, explaining a scene to Rekha and the late Farooq Shaikh. He also found rare photographs depicting scenes that never made it to the final edit preserved in the archives of the Kamat Foto Flash, which Ali calls an “institution” in itself.
This story of this institution dates back to 1945 when it was set up by Neha’s grandfather Damodar Kamat. Though he passed away long before she was born, the fascinating world of still photography in Hindi films that he built via his studio went on to shape not only her father’s life, but also hers.
“Most children in India grow up wanting to be engineers or doctors. But I grew up surrounded by reels, negatives, and photographs — of film sets, muhurats, promotional stills, and action shots,” says Neha. By the time she turned 18, Neha knew she had to digitize the vast archive she had inherited to save it from decay. The collection included over five lakh negatives, capturing behind-the-scenes moments from nearly 800 films, some as early as ‘Gajre’ (1948).
Most were taken by Damodar himself, a Belgaum-born photographer who discovered his love for cameras in his teens. In the 1940s, he travelled to Kolhapur, then a thriving photography hub, to work as an office boy before moving to Bombay to work briefly at Bombay Talkies. Soon after, he founded Kamat Foto Flash in Mahalaxmi — unusual in an era dominated by freelance photographers. The studio soon rose to prominence, earning credits in landmark films from ‘Pyaasa’ (1957) to ‘Sangam’ (1964). This journey was cut short after Damodar’s sudden death in 1967, when his son was just 13.
When Vidyadhar was a little more grown up, he took over the studio, not only continuing his father’s legacy, but taking it into a new era. After the transition to colour photography, the studio began keeping two negatives for each still: a colour one for the producers, and a black-and-white for publicity materials. Production houses like RK Films relied on the studio for its still photography. At its peak, Kamat Foto Flash had a team of over 40 photographers, capturing the moments that made a film, like brush strokes in a painting.
Today, the studio has moved out from its Mahalaxmi office into Goregaon, and much of the archive has been digitized — at the studio’s own cost, covered largely through rights sales, says 41-year-old Neha. Directors like Muzaffar Ali, pop culture researchers, film scholars, and even reality show producers regularly reach out to Neha with requests. Each is carefully searched from boxes of chronologically numbered stills, capturing stunt scenes, dance sequences, glitzy premieres and star-studded parties.
But most interestingly, the stills are also home to many untold stories of the filmy world, including how Dharmendra was replaced by Raaj Kumar in Kamal Amrohi’s musical blockbuster ‘Pakeezah’. The few scenes he shot are etched in memory, thanks to the Kamats. There are also promotional stills that Ajay Devgn and Shah Rukh Khan shot together for ‘Kayenaat’ — before Ajay was replaced by Salman Khan, and the movie became ‘Karan Arjun’.
The Kamats’ fascinating legacy has travelled beyond India. A few years ago, it featured in an exhibition in the UK curated by Rajinder Dudrah, professor of culture studies and creative industries at Birmingham City University.
“We wanted to showcase the stills but also the art that is inherent in the visual imagery. Hand painters turned some of them into billboards outside single screen theatres,” says Dudrah. Neha believes the stills serve a deeper purpose, capturing the often-overlooked contributions of those behind the scenes — technicians, light boys, choreographers, and assistants. “It’s their stories I want to preserve, as much as the stars.”
Awara then went on to become one of Mao Zedong’s favourite films-Swapnil Rai
8:29 AM
Diplomacy is not always about govts, or even intentional. Raj Kapoor’s ‘Awara’ enamored Mao Zedong, Big B was mobbed in Egypt, and SRK became a sensation in Germany. Swapnil Rai, a professor at the University of Michigan who has dived deep into this topic in her book ‘Networked Bollywood: How Star Power Globalized Hindi Cinema’, talks to Shruti Sonal about cinema as a potent tool for diplomacy
Shruti Sonal (THE TIMES OF INDIA; March 30, 2025)
Last month, a delegation from Indonesia surprised everyone by singing ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ at a banquet hosted by President Murmu. How influential is Bollywood as a tool for cultural diplomacy and have we used it well?
Since its inception, the mainstream Hindi film industry, or Bollywood, has had a very global value chain. Its films became popular in a lot of non-Anglophone regions, and that created soft power. However, that soft power remained very dissipated and stayed as a sort of undercurrent. It was never utilized in the way that it could have been by the Indian state or our embassies. Their programming was mostly focused on very traditional mediums like classical music, or classical dance. Even in terms of cinema, only parallel cinema was thought of as high culture. However, mainstream cinema has existed and circulated — especially with certain stars as its key drivers — outside of the nation state. This is quite different compared to countries such as China, that always wants to cultivate a kind of soft power through its English news channels like CGTN, or even the US through shows like Voice Of America. In the 1960s, for instance, a lot of American TV shows like Dallas were heavily subsidized and travelled around the world. India did not do any of that.
So then how did a film like Raj Kapoor’s Awara or Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots become so popular in China?
Bollywood’s soft power has existed outside the confines of the nation-state. To understand its influence, it’s good to go back to archives. For instance, in 1952, India was sending a cultural delegation to China, being the first country to recognize Mao Zedong’s govt. Mao asked for mainstream films to be sent along so he could understand India and its culture through cinema. I found a few letters that were exchanged, showing how everybody was scrambling, and mulling over which films to send. Eventually, they picked ‘Awara’ and Marathi film ‘Amar Bhoopali’. Of course, ‘Awara’ then went on to become one of Mao’s favourite films.
Why was the influence of stars like Raj Kapoor so potent?
My theoretical framework is that these stars hold ‘switching power’. To put it simply, a star can be a switch, which connects a circuit and illuminates a connection that did not exist before, in this case, new global markets. Hindi cinema has been very unique in the way that it has evolved because stars have been so central to the industry as businessmen, right from Raj Kapoor’s RK Films to SRK’s Red Chillies Productions. These are more than production companies; they often act as vertically integrated large conglomerates that have a lot of influence. Even today, when Netflix comes to India, they first meet SRK and Aamir Khan to strike deals. By combining their business acumen with their emotional and market pull, these male megastars have helped cinema go global. Interestingly, Hollywood has always been based on conglomerate-led productions, and only now do we have productions led by stars like Brad Pitt and Reese Witherspoon. There’s almost a Bollywoodizing of Hollywood.
The Khans turn 60 this year and many have talked about whether this is the end of the superstar era. Do you agree?
These stars have established themselves so much within the business that they will continue to have that power. The question is what is going to happen with a new crop of actors? The industry is now different than before. A lot of intermediaries such as casting and talent agencies have come into play. The kind of power that the older stars could possess doesn’t exist anymore. But with the coming of streaming platforms, a lot of the hierarchies based around networks of families, friends and kinships that existed before are being recreated. It’s just a different kind of power and it’s not as expansive as it was before.
Why has this nature of cross-border influence mostly excluded female Bollywood stars?
It’s very interesting how female stars are perceived through a very gendered lens, not just in India but abroad as well. When ‘Awara’ became popular, Nargis also became a huge star, travelling to the Soviet Union as part of delegations. ‘Pardesi’, one of the first Indo-Soviet collaborative films, had her as the female lead with a Russian as the male star. But despite all that, she wasn’t received in the same way as Raj Kapoor. I cite a particular letter about how nobody bothered to even drop her off at the airport in Moscow. In contrast, in an interview I did with the late Shyam Benegal, he told me how when he was in the Soviet Union with Raj Kapoor, they travelled in a train coupe used for the tsars! Years later, there was Aishwarya Rai who had the global press gushing about her superlative beauty, her eyes, and the fact that she spoke English better than the Royals. But even then, she did not have the same kind of direct business power as the male stars. It’s only in moments of flux, when industry structures change, that women get to have momentary agency. When Priyanka Chopra went to Hollywood, things were in a state of flux with the coming of streaming and she found a talent manager in Anjula Acharia, who made her a crossover star. There was another moment of change in the ’90s with liberalization, which is when people like Juhi Chawla got into production with SRK.
This is the time to save the celluloid films; we are also looking for home videos-Prakash Magdum
8:18 AM
Prakash Magdum is the director of National Film Archives of India, Pune. He speaks with Avijit Ghosh on the agonies and ecstasies of film preservation
Avijit Ghosh (THE TIMES OF INDIA; April 8, 2019)
What are the challenges of film preservation in India?
Filmmaking is largely a commercial activity. You make money and you forget about it. You don’t bother about preserving the film. In our country, it’s not mandatory to send one copy of the film to the government archive. You have to reach out to the stakeholders: production houses, producers, copyright holders, individual collectors. In the last three years, we have made systematic efforts to reach out to them.
We went to several centres of filmmaking: Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Bengaluru, Guwahati and Pune. We met with production houses, state government associations, trade bodies. The shift from celluloid to digital has already happened. This is the time to save the celluloid films. If we don’t do it now, they will vanish. The shift has also affected the laboratories. The processing labs were also acting as a kind of storage facility for some producers. They too have stopped functioning.
How much success have you achieved?
In the past two to three years, we got hold of more than 3,000 celluloid films. They are features, documentaries, family films. We have the negatives of all RK films, V Shantaram films, etc. We have got P C Barua’s Devdas (1935) which was made in Bengali. It was believed that the film was lost forever. Then one came to know that the Bangladesh film archive has a copy. I happened to meet its president at a conference in Sydney. We made a request. Now we have 93 minutes footage on DVD. The original film was 140 minutes. We converted it to celluloid, which is the best medium for long-term preservation of film. There was no picture and sound synchronisation. We got it done. We added subtitles. In February, we had a screening at our auditorium.
Have some films been unearthed in unusual circumstances?
We found a print of Bari Behen, a 1949 film starring Suraiya, a few 100 metres away from our office with the daughter-in-law of Baburao Tai, among the foremost distributors of his time. She was staying in a flat near our office. I went there personally and collected the reels. We found Bilwamangal, a 1919 silent film made by Madan Theatres, in Paris. Somebody tipped us off there could be a film in Cinematheque Francaise. After correspondence, we managed to procure 20 minute footage in 2016.
Among non-features, we have 30 hour footage of World War II by British war photographers. It is important because it features Indian forces in Burma, Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe. Almost two million Indians were involved in World War II. But visual documentation of their sacrifice is rare. There are segments like Madras Guard, Johny Gurkha, Indian forces in Egypt, even Cameraman at War. Everything has been digitised.
Did you find short documentaries?
We have the negative of a five reel footage of Raj Kapoor’s visit to the USSR. We are also looking for home videos, a genre which is very popular abroad. We recently got four hours footage from scientist Jayant Narlikar’s collection, shot on 8 mm and super 8 mm, including Narlikar lensing his guru Fred Hoyle in Cambridge.
What about documentation and classification of documents?
Paper material is also important. It could be posters, song booklets, lobby cards, still photographs, scripts. If the print of a film isn’t available, these are secondary windows to that film. Song booklets not only give the songs of the films but also the entire cast and credit, sometimes even to the assistant director level. It has rich reference value. We have 30,000 song booklets which have been digitised. Then there are censor records from 1920s. We also give scholarships to publish monographs. Our focus is to encourage people to write on technicians, people who are not written about, and on regional cinema. Eventually, I’d like to put out all our materials online.
What are the problems you face? Shortage of funds?
Not an issue. We have the project of National Film Heritage Mission where we are looking at digitising 4,000 films. We have a huge collection but we want to assess it professionally. Every reel is being taken out and checked on the winding table for condition and quality. Then it can be properly catalogued.
Do you have enough manpower and storage space?
A large amount of material has come and vaults are getting filled. We also store material of FTII and Films Division, NFDC and Children’s Film Society of India. We want to expand for which we signed an MoU with FTII. Adjacent to our storage facility there, we are going to get three acres of land. We’ll construct the new storage system there for celluloid as well as digital material.
Ranbir Kapoor is expected to act in and direct for the RK Films banner?
7:49 AM
Subhash K Jha (DNA; March 16, 2016)
With all his recent films having let him down, Ranbir
Kapoor is apparently gearing up to act in and direct a home production,
thereby reviving the illustrious long-dormant RK
Films banner.
If sources are to be believed Ranbir, who has from the beginning of his career harboured ambitions of acting in and directing a film for his home production is all set to take on the responsibility of actor and director for RK Films.
Says a source, “At this juncture, he is looking at whether he wants to both direct and act, because that may be too much of a responsibility all at one go. He may just act in the RK film and let one of his friends direct the project.” Anurag Basu, Imtiaz Ali or Ayan Mukerjee are likely to do the needful.
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