M.Age/SMH : Bolly good show
Yap Yok Foo
1 July 2002
Bolly good show
The Indian film industry is suddenly world-class and is heading our
way. Victoria Young looks at the Bollywood phenomenon.
Stick on a bindi and rattle your multi-coloured bangles, Bollywood
fever is on its way. The Western world has finally happened upon the
melodrama, glitz and glamour of the Indian movie business (aka
Bollywood) which the East has been hooked on for decades.
Right now, Bollywood has never been hotter. Glossy magazines are
dedicating pages to Indian-style fashion (henna tattoo, anyone?) and
Western directors are scrambling to make movies inspired by these epic
tales of love, lust and heartbreak the next project for Gurinder
Chadha, the Anglo-Indian director of Bend It Like Beckham, is a
Bollywood-inspired movie.
The Indian film industry produces 1,000 movies a year watched by
audiences across the East from Africa to China and by expat Indians
around the world. Every day 23 million people pile into cinemas across
India (population 1 billion), to watch movies with titles (translated)
such as We Are Travellers On The Path To Love, I Have Found It and The
Lover Will Walk Off With The Bride.
But it's only recently that the rest of us have caught on.
When BBC News Online conducted a poll for the millennium to find out
the greatest star of stage and screen, there was a surprise discovery.
The No1 spot was won by Amitabh Bachchan. Largely unheard of outside
India, Bachchan, the star of 100 Bollywood movies, shoved Sir Laurence
Olivier into second place.
Since then, awareness of India's film industry has taken off and right
now Britain is experiencing what has been dubbed the "Indian summer".
The British Film Institute is touring 150 Bollywood movies around the
country, an exhibition of Bollywood film posters is at London's
Victoria & Albert museum and Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest stage show,
the Bollywood-inspired Bombay Dreams, (www.bombaydreamsthemusical.com)
has just opened.
Australia has also been bitten by the Bollywood bug. Since 1998,
scenery such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Blue Mountains, the 12
Apostles and the Jenolan Caves have appeared in some 40 Indian movies.
One of the first directors to arrive here was Feroz Khan, a famous
movie star in India who has been described as Bollywood's Clint
Eastwood.
"The climate is conducive, it's very picturesque. I think it's one of
the best places to shoot in the world," Khan said, on the phone from
Mumbai (Bombay until 1997). The actor-turned-director, who has 61
movies to his credit, is planning his fifth Australian film shoot
later this year.
It's also very economical, said Anupam Sharma, one of the few contacts
for Bollywood producers and directors in Australia. His Sydney-based
company Films and Casting Temple organises the Australian shoots for
Indian movies, TV commercials and music videos and the hiring of
Australian dancers and film crew to work on them.
The Bollywood industry, based in Mumbai, is a very different machine
from Hollywood. "It's the most organised chaos in the world; nothing
should work yet everything does," said Sharma, who is working on a
fly-on-the-wall documentary, Bollywood Down Under, on Indian film
crews in Australia. "There are no shooting scripts, no shooting
schedules, no call sheets." (Crew may be phoned in the morning to
shoot that day.)
Actors work on several movies at a time and are often handed their
scripts five minutes before filming. This is to avoid someone outside
pinching the idea and making the same movie.
And story-lines aren't considered that important. The focus for
producers and directors is signing up actors with star power. Movie
stars have huge fan followings in India, their faces beam from
billboards around the country and some go on to stand for political
office.
"In the provincial states, movie stars are like demigods and there
have been cases of people attempting suicide when an actor dies," Khan
said. "It's unbelievable. I would say it's far more frenzied than
anywhere else in the world."
The Indian Government has only recently come to recognise the film
business as an industry in its own right. Because of this uncertain
status, banks had always been loath to provide loans to film-makers
and movie stars found it difficult to take out insurance.
"Now a couple of banks have started giving loans only under certain
conditions there has to be a corporate structure, there has to be a
shooting script and budget," said Sharma, who was asked by Baz
Luhrmann to act as a consultant for the Bollywood-inspired scenes in
Moulin Rouge.
Stuntmen organise their own insurance schemes by grouping together and
setting up benefit funds. They all contribute money so if they are
injured, their wives and families can be looked after. To finance
their films, some film-makers go through loan sharks or the Indian
mafia.
"All the major film-makers fund their own films," Sharma said. "If
you've got a leading actor or actress, you don't need money from the
mafia. You can probably sell the movie and make profit on the table
even before the film starts. The mafia came into being for a couple of
reasons. Films are a good way of laundering money. Some people wanted
to be film-makers but did not have the talent or the money, so where
do you get easy money from? The mafia. And what does it give the
mafia? The three things they want wine, women and wealth."
Stage musicals are unknown in India; instead, music is an integral
part of movies. One reason, Sharma said, is that there are more than
25 languages.
"Films have a far-reaching effect on people. They can go to every
religion and every corner of India. Because of the distances and
different dialects in India, music is that universal language."
Movies contain about 10 story-lines, not just one or two, and they
tend to have formulaic plots and stereotypical characters, such as "a
duty-bound elder brother, a doting, crying mother, a younger brother
out of a job, a younger sister ready to be married and a virginal,
sari-clad heroine under a waterfall", Sharma said.
Indian audiences don't mind if movies don't make them think or reflect
social realism they get enough of that walking down the street.
"Indians want a bit of comedy, action, songs, dances and a bit of
cleavage. They are not there to think about world issues," Sharma
said.
Watching a movie for three hours (the usual running time) is a form of
escapism in a country with massive poverty and little social welfare.
With a vast gap between the rich and the poor, movies need to appeal
to a diverse audience, from illiterate villagers in the provinces to
IT professionals in Bangalore.
"Being a developing country, movies are a cheap form of
entertainment," Khan said. "The average man can't afford a holiday."
And that's one of the reasons why Bollywood film-makers have been
shooting scenes overseas, especially song-and-dance numbers, since the
1950s. Favourite destinations include the US, the UK, Europe,
Scandinavia and now Australia.
For 10 rupees (about 50) in a village, or Rs50 for a VIP box in a
Mumbai movie theatre, audiences will see the Eiffel Tower in Paris,
the mountains of Switzerland or the vistas of Sydney Harbour.
"They get the world in a nutshell," Sharma said.
For the latest Bollywood video and DVD releases (with subtitles),
visit Monika Spices, 478 Cleveland Street, Surry Hills. Phone 02 9698
2604. To see Bollywood movies (with subtitles) at Sydney cinemas,
phone Vaishnavi Entertainment on 02 9990 9994 or visit the website
www.vaishnavi.biz.
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