Bollywood celebrities will pay a unique tribute to iconic 1960s film “Mughal-e-Azam” and its legendary director K Asif in London this week. Actress Shabana Azmi, poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar and his filmmaker son Farhan Akhtar will share the stage for the first time at the prestigious British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) on Thursday. They will be joined by Irrfan Khan for the “Indian Cinema: Yesterday and Today” event to be hosted by Haya Asif, the granddaughter of K Asif.
“‘Mughal-e-Azam’ continues to captivate and inspire audiences. A lot has been done to celebrate the timeless classic in the past, but I wanted to help put together something that celebrated the soul of the movie, which was the incredible writing,” said Haya. Bollywood stars will add their own spin to the words written by K Asif and his team with a live poetry recital and an on-stage discussion, moderated by UK-based writer-director Sangeeta Datta on behalf of her South Asian arts group Baithak UK.
“I am delighted to attend a tribute to K Asif hosted by his granddaughter Haya Asif at BAFTA. The monumental romantic epic ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ is unparallelled in cinematic excellence,” said Azmi.”When you think of K. Asif the words that come to your mind are dignity, power, aesthetics, literature and an extreme beautiful sense of cinema. Undoubtedly, he was a great filmmaker… I feel really humbled that I have been given this opportunity to talk about him,” added Akhtar.
‘Mughal-e-Azam’ smashed box office records to become the highest grossing Indian film of all time. It has since become an important part of Indian cinematic history and was named the greatest Indian movie of all time in 2013, which marked the hundredth anniversary of the industry.In 2006, the film became the first Bollywood movie to be released in Pakistan after a gap of over 40 years and opened up the territory for the country. The story of the doomed love affair of Prince Salim and Anarkali starred Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Prithviraj Kapoor in the lead roles.
