As the Kapoor family takes the reins to preserve their legendary patriarch Raj Kapoor’s work, Kunal Kapoor reflected on the importance of heritage, the art of filmmaking, and the lessons we can learn from valuing our cultural history.
In an exclusive interview with ETimes, actor and filmmaker Kunal Kapoor opened up about spearheading the ambitious Raj Kapoor 100 project, celebrating the iconic showman’s centenary. From painstakingly restoring cinematic gems to ensuring the world remembers Raj Kapoor’s unparalleled contribution to Indian cinema, Kunal shared the challenges, insights, and emotional journey behind this monumental effort.
You took the initiative for Raj Kapoor 100. How did it all start?
It goes back to when I started restoring films produced by my father – Junoon, Kalyug, 36 Chowringhee Lane, Vijeta, and Utsav. I restored films without a budget for 3-4 years. Then I asked my cousins about R.K. Films because those films are real classics, the old ones are spectacular. Then it occurred to me that, last year was 50 years since the release of Bobby (1973). This year is the 75th year since the initiation of RK Studios. And 100 years ago, Raj Kapoor was born on the 14th of December.
There are two things to this. One is to celebrate Raj Kapoor at 100. The second and most important is the restoration and preservation of his films. Randhir (Raj Kapoor’s eldest son) had given the films to NFDC-NFAI for archives and safekeeping. But the thing is that they are officers, filmmaking is not their forte. Their forte is management.
We discovered that they had entered Awara (1951) into Cannes. It got rejected because of the quality. That is when Shivendra Singh Dungarpur of Film Heritage Foundation and I realised that it would be an insult not only to Raj Kapoor and his family but to the country if such a print is rejected again. I told NFAI to take my help because I was interested in preserving and restoring his films, especially Aag (1948) and Awara.
Then we discovered that they were sending the film to Toronto International Film Festival. All this without family knowledge. So, I sat with them and we redid Awara. The subtitles were terrible as if translated by a stenographer. Then I went to the family and Ranbir (actor, Raj Kapoor’s grandson) took it seriously and spearheaded the whole thing saying, “We have to do it with or without anyone’s help to preserve this material”. So, that’s how it happened.
‘Raj Kapoor 100’ is done by the family but we are giving due credit to Film Heritage Foundation and NFDC-NFAI. But RK is paying for it. The RK family went to meet the PM in Delhi. When Awara was screened at IFFI, Rahul Rawail asked me to join because he knew that I had been working on it. But I said, “It’s an RK celebration and if anybody should be going there it should be the RK family.”
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Why were you particular about Aag?
I am rediscovering Aag. It is a spectacular film. Visually, it is just unbelievable. The framing and composition of shots are outstanding. Then, of course, Awara. We are concentrating on 10 films. There has been damage to the films. Some are looking better, some are not. The work will continue but we wanted to showcase these 10 films across the country.
Raj Kapoor launched Rishi Kapoor in Bobby (1973). Was launching his son the only intention behind making the film?
I don’t think that was the intention. Raj Kapoor was a filmmaker. Mera Naam Joker (1970) had bombed and nobody was ready to venture out with him. So, Bobby was an in-house film.
I found photos of Bobby’s mahurat in our family album. ‘Bobby Mahurat, 1971’ is clearly written on the photo. My parents are in that photograph. Why? In the early 1970s, my dad (Shashi Kapoor) opened a film distribution company. He had already distributed a couple of art films.
Because Mera Naam Joker flopped, the distributors were not ready to give Raj uncle the kind of money he wanted for Bobby. So, my dad bought Bobby in advance for Delhi-UP territory for 8 lakhs and set the ballpark rate. Maybe that’s the only reason why my parents were present at the mahurat. He must have already made the deal so that other distributors come forward.
How do you remember Raj Kapoor – the uncle and the filmmaker?
I think he went with the times. He was aware of his surroundings. The Raj Kapoor I knew was that he slept on the floor. My father never slept on the floor. But in the hotels, he would keep a mattress on the floor and would open the windows. It became very irritable for him later because hotels started coating the windows because suicide rates started increasing. They wanted fresh air.
He would normally wear white trousers and white shirts. He liked his 555 cigarettes, his Black Labels, and his food. He would frequent Mysore Café in Dadar where they grew up. He knew the price of tomatoes in the local market. Half of today’s artists and filmmakers have not been to a local market.
They say that you should not eat fruit at night. But he was a north Indian, Peshawari Punjabi. They eat fruits at night. Even when he came to London when my mother died, we were staying together. He would go out and buy fruits for the night. Later, I too started enjoying fruit at night.
Why don’t we preserve our legacy and heritage?
It’s not only the film industry. It’s the culture of the whole country. Where do we preserve our history? Go to any historical monument and you’ll see X loves Y with a heart and arrow or ‘I was here’ carved or chalked on the walls etc. We don’t respect our history. It’s not there in our culture. Now what’s in our culture? Rewriting history. Where’s preservation?
Some producers or IP holders might not have the bandwidth to restore and preserve their films.
We have been discussing this thing for the past few days that maybe we have lit a torch and many might take it forward. In many cases, there’s no inheritor. The director/producer is dead, and the families have either disappeared somewhere, or died, or they don’t have the money to restore. It’s going down the drain, you are not going to recover it. You are not going to recover 70-80 lakhs spent on restoring a film. If the government has decided to fund the restoration and preservation of films then they should involve the filmmakers of those films into the process if they are alive. When I restored my father’s films, I would call Shyam Benegal to see what I have done with Junoon. I called Govind Nihalani to help me with the grading of films. I called Aparna Sen and even Girish Karnad for Utsav. He came from Bangalore to see Utsav’s restoration.