1pm – Espace Cosmopolis
Meeting with Jitka DE PRÉVAL, author of Raj Kapoor, le maître de Bollywood, prefaced by Vijay SING.
The book is being previewed at the Festival des 3 Continents as part of the tribute to Raj Kapoor on the eve of the 100th anniversary of his birth. It will be published in France in December.
THE BOOK
The author’s exploration of the master’s work, scrupulously cross-referenced with sources (biographies, press articles, studies and memoirs), goes beyond simple biography to highlight Kapoor’s obsession: not being understood by his peers, by critics, by his public, by the West… It’s a feeling that will never leave him, despite his great popularity and the impressive profusion of his work.
THE AUTHOR
Jitka de Préval, born in the Czech Republic, is a graduate of the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague and holds a doctorate from the Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3. A former director of the Czech Cultural Center in Paris, she is the author of numerous catalogs and scientific articles and, with musicologist Myriam Soumagnac, producer for France Musique, of Voyage musical en compagnie de Guy Erismann (Delatour, 2010). Treasurer of the Société d’activités et de recherches sur le monde indien, she has devoted her research over the past ten years to Indian heritage cinema and, since 2018, to the forgotten history of Pathé frères’ expansion in the Far East. Her book Camille Legrand, Un opérateur Pathé sur la route des Indes, published by Riveneuve in 2021, is praised by specialists as “a rare and precious book, now an essential piece both for the ordinary reader with a passion for adventure and for the historian, who will quickly make it a reference book on the bygone days of forgotten crank turners”.
BOOK PREFACE: VIJAY SINGH
Vijay Singh is a novelist and filmmaker born in India and based in Paris. His novels have been translated into French and other European languages, and his first feature-length film, Jaya, fille du Gange (based on his novel of the same name), was selected for official competition at the Montreal World Film Festival in 1996 and received rave reviews from the French media. He makes documentaries, broadcast notably on Arte, regularly contributes to Le Monde diplomatique, Le Monde and Libération, and was awarded the Prix Villa Médicis hors les murs and, in 2002, the Swiss Grand Prix for best wildlife film for L’Homme et l’éléphant.
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