BOLLYWOOD film stars don’t fade away, they come back to Bradford.

When Samina Peerzada first came here in 1998, along with director Mahesh Bhatt, to take part in the now defunct Bite the Mango Film Festival at what was then the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, she came n the back of a 13-part television series in Pakistan called Karb .

Samina was here to promote her first movie, a drama called Inteha (Extremes). One of its themes was possession and possessiveness.

She said at the time: “In our society in Pakistan a man can get away with a lot, but if a woman has an affair she will never be forgiven. A woman is just an extension, who is not supposed to have a mind of her own.

“Mothers do a lot of brain-washing, persuading their daughters that by marrying a man they acquire his worldly wealth.”

When Samina returned to Bradford in 2013 she came to introduce Pakistan’s first Oscar-winning film by Sarmeen Obald Chinoy called Saving Face, a documentary about reconstructive surgery on women who had been subjected to acid attacks in Pakistan.

She told the T&A: “Talking and settling scores across a table takes a lot of bravery. Anyone who uses acid or violence because their ego or honour is hurt is a coward, it’s an act of cowardice.”

In the 17 years between those two visits Samina had experienced the extremes to which the likes of the Taliban were prepared to go. Her open-air cultural festival in Lahore had been bombed by the Taliban in 2008. Fortunately nobody was hurt and the festival went on. Amitabh Bachchan’s reputation as a film star on the Indian Sub-Continent is impossible to exaggerate apparently; the tall, stately actor is regarded as the unofficial king of Bollywood.

In October 1999 he was driven from London Airport to Bradford by Irfan Ajeeb, then director of the Bite the Mango Film Festival. He arrived during the middle of a downpour and was both glad and amused to accept the shelter of an umbrella held out by Bill Lawrence, then a director of Bradford International Film Festival.

Perhaps he could sense the headline: Welcome to Brollywood which did indeed appear in the following day’s T&A. Asked why he an interrupted his schedule to attend the last bite of the Mango festival, he smiled and said in his big, deep voice: “Irfan has been very persistent and I was just intrigued by the name of the festival. I am sure that festivals of this nature will go a long way to bringing us together and keeping the spirit of our cultures.”

In November 2006 he was back in Bradford for the announcement of the launch of the 2007 International Indian Film Academy weekend at the National Museum. Bachchan’s acclaim had been confirmed when he was voted actor of the millennium by BBC News Online readers.

Perhaps Bradford will see these two stars again before too long.