As a director and producer, eventually with his own studio, Kapoor lived the auteur’s dream. In a mostly formulaic and conservative industry, he made inventive, personal films that were entertaining and accessible but also something more. Socially conscious and Socialist-inclined with nation-building themes, they resonated in — and maybe even helped to define — a newly independent India busy inventing itself.

For those who have never seen a Hindi movie or are curious about Kapoor, the Museum of Modern Art’s well-chosen eight-film series Raj Kapoor and the Golden Age of Indian Cinema, opening on Friday, is an excellent place to start, focusing mainly on Kapoor’s heyday, the late 1940s to ’50s. And for those already familiar with Kapoor, the series offers a rare opportunity to see his films as they should be seen: on the big screen, in new 35-millimeter prints.

With its restless hero and inventive visuals, “Aag” (“Fire,” 1948), made when its director-producer-star was just 24, announces a new voice on the scene that all but shouts, “Look at me!” Filmed in gorgeously stylized black and white — pools of darkness are broken by shafts of light, and eyes glow out of faces cast in shadow — it combines expressionism and homegrown melodrama to tell the story of a soulful upper-class young man (Kapoor) who breaks with his conventional family to pursue a career in theater.

Living on his own terms, the hero searches for truth and beauty and long-lost love. But this isn’t just his story, he says, it’s the “story of youth.” He knows that “creating your own destiny isn’t easy” — are you listening, young India? — yet prefers a path full of obstacles to the comfortable life he would lead in his father’s house.