Historic collection of legendary Indian screenwriter
Advertisements for Tohfa (Agha Jani Kashmiri, India 1947) pasted into Agha Jani Kashmiri scrapbook. George Eastman Museum, 2025.
The George Eastman Museum is now the permanent home of the papers and creative archive of Agha Jani Kashmiri (1908–1998), one of India’s most celebrated story, screenplay, and dialogue writers, whose work shaped the golden era of Indian cinema from the 1930s through the 1970s.
Born in Lucknow, India, a city renowned for its rich artistic and literary traditions, Agha Jani Kashmiri (later known as Aghajani Kashmeri) brought to his writing the elegance, wit, and cultural refinement that defined Lucknow’s heritage. Over a prolific career spanning more than five decades, he wrote or co-wrote the screenplays and dialogue for over 55 films, including such classics as Kismet (1943), Chandralekha (1948), Amar (1954), Chori Chori (1956), Junglee (1961), Mujhe Jeene Do (1963), Love in Tokyo (1966), Khilona (1970), and Parwana (1971). Many of these became enduring hits, helping to define the language, rhythm, and sophistication of Indian cinema’s wildly creative decades.
The donation, made by his son and daughter-in-law, Sarwar Kashmeri and Carlotta Cattani-Kashmeri, includes original screenplays, correspondence, interviews, press reviews, contracts, and a scrapbook made by his wife Khursheed Kashmeri.
The Agha Jani Kashmiri Archive fills a crucial gap in the Eastman Museum’s renowned holdings related to cinema, including the largest collection of South Asian films outside of India. Remarkably, the very first Indian feature acquired by the museum, in 1952, Chandralekha was written by Agha Jani Kashmiri himself.
“The George Eastman Museum was the first United States institution to start collecting South Asian films, and is strongly committed to the preservation of this rich cinematic heritage,” said Dr. Peter Bagrov, senior curator, Moving Image Department, George Eastman Museum. “Agha Jani Kashmiri was a brilliant writer, responsible for some of the most important works in the history of Indian cinema, and his papers will be an invaluable resource for scholars and cinephiles.”
Under the museum’s stewardship, the materials will be archivally conserved and digitized, allowing the collection to remain accessible at no cost to researchers, students, and historians worldwide.
Sarwar Kashmeri said, “It is deeply meaningful for our family that my father’s life’s work will be preserved at the George Eastman Museum, where it will inspire new scholarship and celebrate his lasting impact on the world of cinema.”
The addition of the Agha Jani Kashmiri Archive continues the George Eastman Museum’s commitment to preserving motion pictures and related materials and to advancing the understanding and appreciation of the artists, cultures, and stories of cinema since its invention.
About the George Eastman Museum
Founded in 1947, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the largest film archives in the United States. Its holdings comprise more than 400,000 photographs, 31,000 motion picture films, the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, one of the leading libraries of books and archival materials related to photography and cinema, and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. The museum is located on the historic Rochester estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active publishing program, and its L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation’s graduate program (a collaboration with the University of Rochester) makes critical contributions to film preservation. The George Eastman Museum is supported with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. For more information, visit eastman.org.