Shekhar Kapur: At Home in the World

EVERY TIME I post something on X about Masoom, I get swamped by messages,” says Shekhar Kapur. The 1983 movie, written by poet Gulzar, starring Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi, was a critical and commercial success. The grace with which it handled adultery, the life of a child out of wedlock, and the wife who must accept her husband’s love child was affecting. “The story was so emotional,” says Kapur, “that people have wanted me to make a sequel for the longest time. I’ve been writing it for the last ten years. There is still a place for a good story told from the heart.” With the script, music and budget in place, he is about to start directing Masoom: The Next Generation. It will star, among others, his daughter, singer and actor, Kaveri Kapur.

It will also be exactly 30 years since Kapur made his last film in India. That was Bandit Queen, which changed the grammar of filmmaking in India with its in-your-face rawness and unflinch­ing realism. It was also a film that put him front and centre of several debates—of cinematic freedom and state censorship; authenticity versus appropriation; and the idea of rape as a dehumanising cinematic tool ver­sus the survivor’s rights. But the film launched many careers, from actor Manoj Bajpayee, who had a minor role, to director Tigmanshu Dhulia, who was its casting director.

At 78, Kapur shows no signs of wear and tear. He has just agreed to helm the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), a 55-year-old show­case of domestic and global cinema, which has still to find its feet. Despite a move from Delhi to Goa, in 2004, the festival has not quite been able to become a must-visit on the cinephile’s map. “I believe you can either be a critic permanently on the outside, or be part of the criticised and try to change things. If you can, even marginally change things, then you should say yes,” he says, adding that it took him all of ten minutes to agree when he got a call from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to head the 55th and 56th film festival. “We have only 90 days for this year’s festival, but I hope to make a fundamen­tal difference by next year,” he says.

He plans to add technology to the festival with a companion event, WAVES, which focuses on the technology of content and distribution. “The next generation of Indians, 14- and 15-year-olds, are prompting films with AI, without training. The Venice Film Festival last year saw several big-name actors and directors endorsing AI cinema as an opportunity and a tool rather than a threat,” he says. And as he points out, film is a fine art but there are other ways of communication and entertainment, from gaming to YouTube to TikTok or its many versions.

He believes India has the appetite to consume as well as produce tremendous content. “Three years from now, a movie like Kalki can be made with AI,” he says, with the confidence of one who is soon launching an AI film company. He believes AI will transform the way people think and live. “When tractors came, people thought farmers would be redundant. When computers came everyone thought engineers would not be needed. Similarly with digital, but each age empowers us, and increases our productivity,” he says.

It also democratises creativity. “The other day my cook came to me with a story idea which was impres­sive. It was a treatment for Mr India 2 (a sequel to Kapur’s second film, a blockbuster starring Sridevi and Anil Kapoor, made in 1987). He told me it was written with ChatGPT. With AI, my cook has the po­tential to be a great writer and a peon has the opportunity to be a CEO. AI is a better teacher than conventional classrooms,” he says, adding everyone has their own AI, which is as potentially terrifying as it is exciting.

He is open to all forms of artistic expression. IFFI has also recently instituted OTT (streaming) awards, and he is gung-ho about it. “It has contributed to an immense creative talent— writers, directors, actors. The discovery of new talent has all been done by OTT.” For him the more platforms a film is show­cased at, the better it is.

Currently in Mumbai, Kapur is soon off to Los Angeles to buy the rights to a New York Times bestseller he wants to adapt into a movie. He divides his time between Mumbai, London and Dubai, which gives him a vantage point for the transformations happening around the world. “I am a citizen of the world,” he says. “The last ten years have been full of change. Covid was a gamechanger. I didn’t get it, but I was stuck in the mountains for four months where I had gone to do a photo essay on the melt­ing glaciers,” he says. The essay didn’t get done but at a broader level, he was surprised to see how the world went back to its old ways, proving to him that hope and greed don’t go away. The sui­cide of Sushant Singh Rajput, with whom he had collaborated closely on his cherished project Paani, which is yet to get made, also affected him deeply.

PAANI IS ONE of several films Kapur announced or abandoned because of various reasons, so much so that there is a Wikipedia page dedi­cated to his ‘unrealised projects’. Among them is Joshilay, a 1989 movie starring Sunny Deol; Barsaat, Bobby Deol’s 1995 movie which was completed by Rajkumar Santoshi; and Time Machine, a 1992 film starring Aamir Khan, whose clips are still available on YouTube. Along with incomplete pet projects such as a biopic on South African icon Nelson Mandela and Lord Buddha, he acquired, perhaps somewhat unfairly, the rep­utation of a choker, or serial deserter. Indian cinema, he feels, has altered, much of it provoked by the rise of OTT. “It’s clear now that filmmakers have to make movies for the widescreen or movies that are really emotional like 12th Fail,” he says.

He continues to collaborate, with friends such as AR Rahman, with whom he put up a dazzling musical show at the Dubai Expo 2020 called Why? The Musical. He also acted, most recently in Anand Gandhi’s 2021 sci-fi satire OK Computer. So does he enjoy being a mentor to these “islands of creativity,” I ask. “Oceans of imagination,” he corrects me.

So how does all this fit into his schedule? “A long time ago, I decided I would not have a career and that I would do nothing if it was not play. Even at IFFI for instance, it is not an executive position. My job is to ideate. I want to constantly be full of joy and wonder. Unfortunately for the longest time our education system did not encourage people to be creative, but I believe everyone is an artist. The start-up culture is changing the thinking, but we’ve created a system where jobs are paramount.”

His international work continues, most recently with What’s Love Got to Do with It? (2022), with an all-star cast ensem­ble, written by Jemima Khan, which made 11 million dollars worldwide. It was the third largest grossing British film of 2023. The first film he made in the West was the much lauded Elizabeth (1998), which launched Cate Blanchett’s magnificent career; followed by The Four Feathers (2002), which starred the late Heath Ledger; and the 2007 sequel to Elizabeth, The Golden Age, which won Blanchett an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. There was also Will, a 2017 TNT series based on the life of a young William Shakespeare.

His work abroad has very much reflected his anti-colonial understanding of English history and a healthy appreciation of its multiculturalism. In Elizabeth, he ruffled a lot of feathers by turning the dusty-fusty potential period piece into a contemporary piece on political intrigue. For him, making Elizabeth was an act of insurrection by the son of a refugee from Lahore in Pakistan who had to leave everything at home.

But for many fans at home, he will always be the wind beneath IPS officer Kalyani Singh’s wings in Udaan (1989), where he played the dishy District Magistrate of Sitapur, Harish Menon. He would surface on and off onscreen as an actor, in movies such as Drishti (1990), in series such as Khandaan (1985) and Mahanagar (1988- 89). His stint in television made him a nationwide star at a time Doordarshan was the sole TV channel. After giving up the possibility of living as a trained chartered accountant in London, it was as an actor that he began in Mumbai cinema, acting in his uncle Dev Anand’s Ishk Ishk Ishk in 1974. Kapur is clearly not given to looking back but it’s been an exciting five decades in the art and science of entertainment.

He’s been an actor, director, music producer, dreamer and entrepreneur. He ran a successful comic book company; co-produced Bombay Dreams, having introduced Andrew Lloyd Webber to AR Rahman, and once famously said in 2002 that if Spiderman would remove his mask in the future, it would reveal an Asian face. He predicted that the Western dominance of entertainment would be over in ten years because of the rise of the Asian markets. It hasn’t quite happened but the axis of entertainment is shifting.

Now he is betting big on India being an AI superpower. “If we can develop a mission to Mars at one-tenth of the world’s price, why can’t we create an IP for AI filmmaking in India?” he asks.

BollywoodcinemaElizabethInternational Film Festival of IndiaShekhar KapurThe Four FeathersWhat’s Love Got to Do with It?