Srinagar: When Kashmir Ki Kali was released in 1964, it did more than become a popular romance film. The image of Shammi Kapoor wooing Sharmila Tagore in the song, ‘Taarif Karoon Kya Uski‘ in a shikara on Dal Lake has transcended time. 62 years later, watching Shakti Samanta’s film on a floating screen in the Dal Lake was a full-circle moment.
“The film was released before I was born. But I have watched it so many times. To see this film being screened at an international film festival, which in itself is a big thing, was a bit emotional. We have never seen anything this grand here in Kashmir,” Mohammad Adeeb Mir, a resident who stopped by to catch glimpses of the screening, told ThePrint.
The screening was part of the four-day floating cinema organised as part of the first International Film Festival of Jammu & Kashmir (IFFJK), which began in Srinagar on 7 September. The festival, themed “Rang-e-Cinema”, is the first international film festival of its kind in the state. The event featured 135 films from more than 40 countries, alongside masterclasses, conversations and other industry events.
The floating cinema, however, is the festival’s most far-fetched idea. Rather than confining audiences to a conventional theatre, the organisers have taken cinema onto Dal Lake, a location that has itself been a star of Hindi films for decades.
Four floating screens were installed on the lake to give the view from all four sides to the audiences, who gathered along the banks, and many even arrived in shikaras, turning the lakefront into an open-air cinema.
The film screening on Dal Lake, which runs from 8 pm to 10 pm, has deliberately leaned into nostalgia, bringing back films that have a strong association with Kashmir. The first evening featured Junglee (1961), followed by Arzoo (1965) on the second day. Then came Kashmir Ki Kali on 9 September, while Yash Chopra’s Kabhi Kabhie (1976) is set to close the floating cinema on 10 September.
“I am mesmerised. It is a different experience. I never imagined it to be so fantastic. This is iconic. I have seen that film a couple of times, but never like this,” said producer-director Rahul Bali.
“I never imagined I would be in a shikara, where Shammi Kapoor sang the song, and watching the film from a shikara… floating cinema, I think, is one of the best concepts IFFJK has introduced and hats off to the festival team for this brilliant idea,” he added.
It is also a programme for the film festival that hopes to reconnect Kashmir with its cinematic history. For decades, the Valley was one of Hindi cinema’s favourite locations. However, the residents say the depiction of Kashmir through the lens of conflict has dominated the past decade.
The IFFJK is now attempting to revive that relationship, not merely by bringing films to Kashmir, but by making Kashmir itself part of the cinematic experience once again.
And on Dal Lake, where Shammi Kapoor once sang his way into Bollywood’s idea of Kashmir, the past is quite literally being projected onto the present.