Karimuddin Asif

Karimuddin Asif ( K. Asif ; born June 14, 1924 in Etawah , Uttar Pradesh , † March 9, 1971 in Bombay , Maharashtra ) was an Indian film director of the Urdu-language Bollywood film.

biography

Asif began as an assistant to his uncle, the director and actor S. Nazir. In 1944 he made his first film himself - Phool with the stars Sitara Devi , Prithviraj Kapoor , Durga Khote and Suraiya was a great success. Then he planned a film about the time of the Mughal emperor Akbar I and chose the popular legend about his dancer Anarkali. Chandramohan and Nargis were to take on the leading roles , but after Chandramohan's death in 1949, Asif put his project aside for the time being. Instead, he produced SK Ojhas Hulchul (1951) and only then took up the old idea again. He cast Prithviraj Kapoor as Akbar, Durga Khote as his wife, and Dilip Kumar as Prince Salim and Madhubala as the dancer Anarkali and shot Mughal-e-Azam from 1951. After nine years of production, the costume drama was published in 1960 and one of the most commercially successful Indian films .

Asif, who wanted to shoot Mughal-e-Azam in color, but could only shoot a few opulent scenes of this film with the comparatively expensive material, began a complete color film about the Arab love story of Laila and Majnu. In the middle of filming, however, the lead actor Guru Dutt died in 1964 and production stopped. Asif later started over with Sanjeev Kumar in the lead role, but the director's death in 1971 prevented the film from being completed. In 1986 it was released in unfinished form by the producers KC Bokadia under the title Love and God . His big film project Sasta Khoon Mehnga Paani , which was to be shot in Jordan, was also unfinished after Asif's death.

Web links

• K. Asif in the Internet Movie Database (English)