Remembering Kishore Kumar

The Amit Kumar Fan Club,founded in 2005,organised its annual Kishore Kumar Film Festival this year to coincide

The Amit Kumar Fan Club,founded in 2005,organised its annual Kishore Kumar Film Festival this year to coincide with Amit Kumars 60th birthday. The festival was jointly done with Nandan and Cine Central. The festival,held between February 23 and 25,was inaugurated by Amit Kumar and Sandip Ray,filmmaker and director,Nandan.

Said Amit Kumar at the inauguration,Today,18 years after its launch,Amit Kumar Fan Club AKFC has taken the initiative to relaunch Mad on CD through its effort and enthusiasm. I am also thankful to the music company EMI for supporting the initiative. Mad is a personal favourite as the music has been composed by me. I hope this relaunch will justify the faith my fans have placed in my music.

The USP of the festival is that all five films showcase Kishore Kumar as a producer. The films are Lukochuri 1958 in Bengali directed by Kamal Majumdar,Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein 1964,Door Ka Rahi 1971,Badhti Ka Naam Dadhi 1974 and Shabash Daddy 1979. The rest were directed by Kishore Kumar who also composed the music,wrote the script for a couple of these films and sang and acted in them. They show Kishore Kumar in a different persona where he could cook up the weirdest of ideas to infuse the films with seriousness against the brand of comedy he was famous for.

Though Baba was popular for his fun-filled roles,he made some films that have a direct emotional connect with the audience. We can see Baba in a completely different mood in most of these films. I think the audience old and young will have a wonderful time watching these old-time films, Amit Kumar elaborated. Sandip Ray said,I wish someone were to capture Amit on a movie camera during one of his recordings. It is an entertainment package by itself.

Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein explores a delicate relationship between a father Kishore Kumar and son Amit Kumar. The father comes back home from the war front to find his entire family devastated in a fire. The son is the sole survivor who has lost his voice in shock. The father commits himself to get his sons voice back. Shabash Daddy narrates another father-son relationship in a different vein. The father,a Colonel Kishore Kumar fixes up his son Amit Kumars marriage to his friend Madan Puris daughter and goes off to the Sundarbans. But he falls in love with Kamli,a local beauty and expresses his desire to marry her scandalising his son and the rest of the family. Door Ka Rahi was also on a serious note,carrying over the sad quality of Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein. Badhti Ka Naam Dadhi thematically,is a timeless film that explores the eccentricities of the stinking rich who have no idea what to do with their money and the greed of the common man eager to get a slice of that big cake.