From Ajmer to artificial intelligence, Kamal Swaroop’s cinematic odyssey spans surreal visions, forgotten histories, and radical pedagogy—mapping a life devoted to Dadasaheb Phalke, myth, memory, and meaning. Khalid Mohamed speaks to the filmmaker.
Kamal Swaroop, the avant-garde filmmaker and visionary behind Om-Dar-B-Dar and Rangbhoomi, offers a compelling insight into his lifelong obsession with Dadasaheb Phalke. Rooted in Ajmer’s mysticism and shaped by his time at FTII and ISRO, Swaroop blends mythology, technology, and radical aesthetics across media forms—from documentaries to graphic novels. His 1,500-page screenplay on Phalke, developed using artificial intelligence and inspired by theorists like Friedrich Kittler, is a poetic yet encyclopaedic meditation on cinema’s evolution. As a mentor, observer, and storyteller, he continues to question mainstream filmmaking, pushing boundaries through personal archives, teaching, and experiments with AI.

Now that it’s been announced that Rajkumar Hirani is to start a biopic with Aamir Khan in the eponymous role of Dadasaheb Phalke (1870–1944), the Father of Indian Cinema who made the first Indian film Raja Harishchandra (1913), I had to contact Kamal Swaroop right away.

Swaroop (now 72 years old), an iconoclastic filmmaker, researcher, teacher, graphic book artiste and graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, has already won two National Awards for Phalke Children (1994) and Rangbhoomi (2013), two separate documentaries on the pioneering filmmaker.

Swaroop has also won two Filmfare Awards, the jury’s special honour for his student diploma film Dorothy (1974), and the Critics’ Best Film for Om-Dar-B-Dar (1988), which has achieved a cult status among cineastes.

From his house in Goregaon East, here are Kamal Swaroop’s responses on the Rajkumar Hirani–Aamir Khan project as well as a shoal of subjects I’ve always been curious about—one of the most irrepressibly wacky film chefs who tosses ideas around like an untasted salad. Excerpts:

On the Phalke biopic in the works
I believe S.S. Rajamouli (most famously known for the two Tamil-Telugu Baahubali fantasy epics) has also announced a Phalke film titled Made in India. Phalke’s life has all the elements of a classic hero’s journey—no wonder it’s such an appealing role for any ageing star actor. Years ago, some friends had urged me to contact Aamir Khan for the part, and I did mention the idea to him, but nothing materialised.

I don’t know about Rajkumar Hirani’s approach to the biopic. I wasasked for a meeting by two writers for the Hirani–Aamir Khan project; they admitted that they had been inspired by my work, but I refused to meet them since there would have been a conflict of interest.

Personally, I’ve always imagined a feature film on Phalke as a meditation on ageing and the passage of time. I would have preferred to cast different actors for the different phases of the protagonist’s life. I see Marathi theatre actors in the role, especially those with distinct Chitpavan Brahmin physical features, which would bring authenticity to the character.

There has been a Marathi film Harishchandrachi Factory (2009), with the theatre actor Nandu Madhav in the lead. It focused on the making of India’s first film when Phalke was 42 years old. It adopted a light-hearted, comic, and theatrical tone, incorporating slapstick which suited the silent era. However, many film enthusiasts complained that it lacked depth and seriousness in character development and subject matter.

My proposal for a definitive narrative on Phalke traces the assimilation of the arts and crafts down the ages through industrialisation, which led to the birth of film entertainment. Incidentally, all my research is accessible on a log-line.

On Swaroop’s restless phase during the 1990s

Ouch. I was going through heartache, fighting with everyone those days, losing all my friends although I wasn’t entitled to be a brat in any which way.

 

On the value of awards
The first Filmfare Award was a Special Mention for my student film, Dorothy—never collected it. The second one was for Om-Dar-B-Dar, but I was living in some forgotten corner with no phone, no forwarding address, completely unreachable. A staffer from Filmfare had dropped a hint to Mani Kaul that I’d be winning, but no one knew how to contact me.

Next morning, a light-boy came knocking at my place in Adarsh Nagar, Lokhandwala, and informed me that the trophy had been presented and collected on my behalf by Randhir Kapoor. On stage, he couldn’t pronounce the title and said something like “ODarrdooorBadarrr.” True story.

Honestly, more than the awards, I truly cherish a brilliant article in Filmfare on Om-Dar-B-Dar—with an unforgettable headline, a quote from me: “I killed 4,000 frogs. If I had money, I’d have killed 4,000 elephants.” That perfectly matched my sense of humour and the spirit of the film. Mrs. Maneka Gandhi and the Censor Board had objected to a segment showing frogs being dissected in a lab.

I could never build a protective armour around me; there was no castle to retreat into. Instead, for sheer survival, I began working in advertising agencies as a low-paid Hindi copywriter and proofreader.
I couldn’t attend the Berlin Film Festival to screen Om-Dar-B-Dar. There was resistance from the Censor Board, and the film had to be smuggled out. I’d become something of a cautionary tale for the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), which felt I’d made an incomprehensible film. Since the funding had been a loan, I was listed as producer—a defaulter.

Then luck knocked. Marco Müller invited me to the Turin Film Festival (Italy). One morning, I saw him strolling down a street there. I pulled out a five-page story Om and the Satellite. Just like that. Then, one quiet morning in my Adarsh Nagar hut, quite surreally, a stranger showed up with a cheque for $10,000 from the Hubert Bals Foundation, headed by Marco Müller.

A friend, Sudhanshu, encouraged me to begin work on my Phalke project. I shifted to New Bombay. By 1994, I had shot a documentary version of Om and the Satellite City, tracing Phalke’s life for a book, which is an important work I think, and even created a graphic novel with the students of the National Institute of Design (NID, Ahmedabad). Simultaneously, I was working on Channel V promos derived from one of my old scripts—Miss Palmolive All-Night Cabaret.

Since then, it’s been a long journey with Phalke. I’ve conducted workshops on his life and work in every city he lived and created in, eventually making eight documentaries which culminated in Rangbhoomi—an 80-minuter about his seven-hour-long play, written during his self-imposed exile in Kashi when he left cinema and returned to theatre.

Rangbhoomi fetched me my second President’s Award, after Phalke Children (1994), which brought me some long-awaited acceptance. I was finally invited to a film school as a guest teacher—thanks to all the Phalke work, which was like inventing a new kind of pedagogy.
On the other obsession, his birth-town Ajmer

My roots have always been in Ajmer—the absurdities, myths, and chaos of small-town life shaped the world of Om-Dar-B-Dar. Next, Phalke became my enduring obsession—my surrogate father figure, the exile, the eccentric visionary. Since then, I’ve been immersed in writing a vast 1,500-page screenplay on Phalke. It’s an epic in itself, built with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), inspired by new media theories and the writings of the German media and technology theorist Friedrich Kittler. Every scene is a crystallised fragment, dense with meaning—a dialectic of ageing, time, myths, and history. It is encyclopaedic yet poetic. It’s a seamless narrative weaving science, technology, and the development of cinema from 1870 to 1944—where the inner and outer worlds mirror each other in an embryonic, mythical form.

I’ve been going to the Kumbh and the Pushkar Melas regularly because I’m fascinated by crowds and power. My earlier films, Pushkar Puran and Samudra Manthan, both evolving from those fairs, were quite well received.

On his identity as a filmmaker
I’m not a professional filmmaker; I don’t work for anyone. When I write, it’s primarily to entertain myself—an escape into imagination, humour, and possibility. I’ve built a vast collection of screenplays. Occasionally, I pitch one to a channel like Netflix or Sony or to a producer. Still, my focus remains Silver Scar, my Phalke screenplay. I’m told to hurry up—saying someone else has announced a Phalke film, but I’m not concerned. Most of the material lives on my site, Phalke Factory. I have a fantastic intuition for free association and fractal thinking.

On the influence of Mani Kaul, Saeed Mirza and Kumar Shahani
Saeed Mirza was older than me, but at the Film Institute I was his senior. As for Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani, their cinema didn’t directly influence me. They did open doors for me with their affection, support, and constant go-aheads.

On his days at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO, Bangalore) and the Pune Film Institute
I was at the Film Institute from age 19 to 22, watching films, reading voraciously. I didn’t understand much of it then. I was too young. Still, the aura of that place, the immersion in cinema and ideas, left a deep imprint on my impressionable mind. There’s the seduction of greatness, the lure of glory, and then the quiet alienation from your own people. A kind of dehumanisation creeps in—you start sensing the undercurrents of the violence underlying the aesthetics.

ISRO, on the other hand, was like utopia. I was 22—suddenly with money, creative freedom, standing on the threshold of a new technological world: satellites, television, video. The sky was the limit. In fact, ISRO shaped the foundation of who I am and how I think.

On forays into teaching
I come from a family of teachers, so quite inevitably I’ve often found myself cast even as a ‘Guruji’—with a touch of mockery just to sideline the competition. These days, I do get called in as a consultant or advisor, which I suppose syncs with my Brahmin background. Phalke himself was India’s first film teacher. So I still conduct online classes with a small but dedicated group of film enthusiasts who fortunately pay for it.
See, the filmmaker is a force, a fighter, a commander, a mover of worlds. The teacher must subvert the ego and nurture others, which demands sacrifice. At this very moment, I’m not teaching though, to relish my privacy and solitude.

On his lifestyle
I live alone. My two children are also in films—we meet regularly, which brings me joy. Most of my time is spent immersed in reading and gathering material for the Phalke project or writing the script itself. I go for long walks, often capturing little moments with my phone camera. Currently, I’m also collaborating with Akshay Singh on a book about the future of Indian cinema.

On Artificial Intelligence

For me, AI is a blessing, since I work with vast amounts of information—especially for scripting the Phalke project. AI empowers me. The common criticism that AI lacks subjectivity doesn’t bother me, because I see art as an impersonal, artificial construct—a kind of architecture.

On the fizzling out of ‘New Wave’ Indian cinema
The ‘New Wave’ began to dissipate around the time globalisation set in. The first clear sign was the rank commercialisation of The Times of India’s non-profit film publications—those rare platforms which championed parallel cinema. Without that critical support, the ecosystem began to crumble.

While NFDC did fund films, it couldn’t sustain careers. There was no distribution network, no strategy to cultivate audiences. Brilliant filmmakers became isolated like scattered sparks with no fire to hold them. Art, after all, needs more than passion—it needs scaffolding.

On his children Ardra and Kashyap

Ardra has directed a few short films and is currently working with NFDC. She’s already a President’s Award winner for producing the Tamil film Bramaar (2000), and is training herself further to become a producer. And Kashyap is an aspiring filmmaker and stand-up comedian. They’re both learning from my mistakes—they’re navigating through entirely different times. To live like me in an easy-come-easy-go way, that’s a luxury only a few can afford.

On his Facebook posts, which are mostly about people watching
I’ve never looked at people as ‘characters.’ Rather, fleeting moments and ephemeral gestures. I’ve always been into psycho-analysis to explore my own impulses, to make sense of my inner workings and, at times, to shape the script for Phalke—a man with a large family, battling self-inflicted blindness and memory loss.

On Untold Secrets
Once upon a time, I dreamt of going full-throttle commercial. Miss Palmolive All-Night Cabaret was written for that very purpose—even turned it into a graphic novel... but that chapter is closed. If I make a film now, it’ll be small and intimate—maybe just a single episode from Phalke’s life. Like the final six months before his death at 74, when he began losing his memory, unable to recognise his own children, slipping back into childhood. Or on the plague of 1896 in Godhra, where Phalke was a small-town photographer and lost his first wife. Those are the stories I still carry.

On the most significant works of world cinema
David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, Ritwik Ghatak’s Titash Ekti Nadir Naam, Luis Buñuel’s Nazarin, Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s The Turin Horse, Yasujiro Ozu’s Autumn Afternoon, Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Akira Kurosawa’s Ran.

On an afterlife
I hope there’s no such thing. Life is tolerable only because you know it’s going to end. I have written a script on this idea called Omniyam, inspired by The Third Policeman by the Irish writer Flann O’Brien. According to him, “Human existence is a hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucination of day and night… It ill-becomes any man of sense to be concerned about the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death.”