Techno-Nostalgia: Colorization of K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam

Abstract

The incantatory aura associated with K. Asif’s magnum opus, Mughal-e-Azam (1960), a film that was marveled at as a technological benchmark for its experimentation with the new technology of color in Bombay cinema, has greatly mobilized the vocabulary of a “classic” as it traveled from the restricted and potentially obscure space of traditional archives back into the domain of public exhibition through its re-release in a colorized avatar. This article traces the material displacement and virtual dispersion of the film through the category of the remake. As the film goes through optical and chemical changes, memory of the film is mobilized to reflect on the digital and its relationship to the traditional film archive. In this process, the cultural biography of the film as a classic is employed to not just map the divergent impulses of cinema’s celluloid history and its interaction with contemporary digital culture, but also as a way of re-telling the history of the Bombay film industry as it recycles its archive and allegorizes the past.