Gina Lollobrigida was a jury member at IFFI in the year 1975. It was a time very early in my career. And it was perhaps the first time I was attending an International Film Festival of India, so I was very excited.
I had heard about Gina, maybe had seen a few movies of her too. When I came to know that she was going to hold a press conference, I went very early to the PIB conference hall, found out where she would be seated, and took the best position possible on the carpet in front of the chair she was going to occupy.
This close-up picture of Gina was taken during her press conference with a 135mm telephoto lens from a distance of three or less than three feet from her, with available tube lights in the conference hall. I exposed two full 36-frame rolls of 35mm film for her pictures.
Two pictures from the lot were immediately published in the Illustrated Weekly of India and six or seven in a film weekly, Film World. It just happened that the editor of Film World was there at her press conference and caught hold of me to get more pictures of Gina at the Italian ambassador’s house, where there were no other cameramen, so all those pictures became exclusive for me. Later, I also took her pictures sitting with Satyajit Ray and the Information and Broadcasting Minister at the time, IK Gujral.
I briefly met Gina a second time later, in Bombay (now Mumbai), at the ‘Muhurat Ceremony’ of Indian American film producer Krishna Shah’s film, in which she was to be the lead along with Dharmendra and Zeenat Aman. I don’t know the name of the film, or what happened to it. I think it was never made for some reason.
According to Wikipedia, Luigia Lollobrigida, known professionally as Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian actress and photojournalist, was one of the highest-profile European actresses of the 1950s and early 1960s, a period in which she was an international sex symbol.
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