“Thobda dekha hai kabhi aaine mein?” This was the response Amitabh Bachchan got from one of the hundreds of producers’ he tried to sound out in Mumbai more than 50 years ago. Interestingly, this thobda is still gracing the big screen in all glory, marginalising his much younger successors, superstars, to the position of also-rans, almost.
The late filmmaker Mrinal Sen once recalled meeting this tall, lanky young man with a golden honey voice at the residence of filmmaker and writer K.A. Abbas when the latter was auditioning youngsters for Saat Hindustani (1969), in which Bachchan played a minuscule role as one of the seven Hindustanis.
The film festival, fittingly named ‘Bachchan - Back to the Beginning’ has been spread across 17 cities and 22 cinemas over four days across the country S.M.M AUSAJA and The Film Heritage Foundation
Today, this star of all stars is being celebrated for his rich contribution with a retrospective of his 11 films to be screened across India, organised by PVR Cinemas, the huge multiplex chain spread across the subcontinent. But PVR is not alone.
The Film Heritage Foundation, founded by Shivraj Singh Dungarpur, in 2014, has also collaborated in creating this very unique tribute to Bachchan. This foundation is a non-profit organisation dedicated to support the conservation, preservation and restoration of the moving image and in developing interdisciplinary programmes to create awareness about the language of cinema. The FIAF, as it is popularly known, has made Amitabh Bachchan its ambassador and bestowed on him the 2021 FIAF award in a virtual ceremony that marked the presence of Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.
The films to be screened are Don, Kaala Patthar, Kaalia, Kabhi Kabhie, Amar Akbar Anthony, Namak Halaal, Abhimaan, Deewar, Mili, Satte Pe Satta and Chupke Chupke.
An exhibition of Bachchan’s rare and unseen photographs, posters and memorabilia
A glimpse of rare posters and photographs of the star S.M.M AUSAJA and The Film Heritage Foundation
To coincide with the festival, Film Heritage Foundation has set up an exhibition that highlights significant moments and aspects of the superstar’s career captured for posterity through ephemera, including rare and unseen photographs, art works and memorabilia. The exhibition has been meticulously researched and curated by film historian and author S.M.M. Ausaja, who had previously mounted exhibitions on Amitabh Bachchan’s 70th and 75th birthdays respectively.
The film festival, fittingly named ‘Bachchan - Back to the Beginning’ has been spread across 17 cities and 22 cinemas over four days across the country. Says Diungarpur, “We are expecting audiences stepping back into the cinemas that would perhaps bring about a metamorphosis in the commonly but erroneously held perception that film heritage and classic cinema should remain confined within film festivals and retrospectives. ‘Bachchan - Back to the Beginning’ is people’s festival that will see fans of all ages and backgrounds come back to cinemas across the country to see the biggest superstar back on the big screen — the way these films were meant to be seen. We hope this will also encourage producers and copyright holders to preserve and restore our endangered film heritage.”
Amitabh Bachchan's outfit in 'Shahenshah' on display S.M.M Ausaja and The Film Heritage Foundation
Alongside the screenings of Bachchan’s films, a poster exhibition of the star’s famous films has also been organised, thanks to the famous collector of film posters S.M.M Ausaja, who already has more than 20,000 film posters in his collection. As a boy of 11, “I was hung up on Amitabh Bachchan. I lived in Lucknow. It is not just the Big B’s films that he was fascinated by but with everything about the star – his clothes, his way of walking and talking, his hairstyle. I would copy his walk, his clothes, his hairstyle as much as my young age would allow. Then, one day, something happened that changed the very purpose of my life. And slowly, I extended my interests to film posters and for several decades, I have been collecting not only film posters of Bachchan but any memorabilia to do with Indian films per se,” he says.
In 2018, Ausaja curated a unique exhibition on the life and times of Amitabh Bachchan at St. Regis, Mumbai. Bachchan inaugurated the exhibition himself. In 2019, Ausaja was consultant on the prestigious Oral History Project on Amitabh Bachchan, commissioned by the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences in collaboration with the Film Heritage Foundation. He has also prepared a complete coffee table book called The Bachchans which traces the careers of five celebrities in a single family with rare visuals and extensive research. The exhibition will be running at PVR, Juhu in Mumbai.
A journey to remember
Bachchan’s career has several milestones, dips and peaks that can offer any young man or woman a lesson in what hard work, determination, focus and discipline can achieve and that too, spanning a period of 50 long years. His career is chiselled out of what he said “luck”, though it was really defined by his ability to break out of one image after another, sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding, rising like a Phoenix from the ashes when he fell. The 1970s saw the rise of an actor who defined, shaped and dictated the terms of the character he portrayed. He is still alive and kickin’.
However, the organisers have announced a gate pass for Rs 400.
Shoma A. Chatterji is a veteran film critic, film scholar and author. She has won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema, twice.