As Bollywood in particular and India in general continues to crank out one formulaic movie and TV show after another, a new mix of the old Art and Commercial has emerged. There is a bold experimentation (sometimes with and sometimes without the proverbial song and dance sequence) that is being accepted by the Indian and NRI audience.
On the flip side of the coin, the western movie industry is also experiencing succes in Indian-themed movies. Not only that, they recently bought the rights to remake an Indian movie!
So, what does this mean? And I do not mean theoretically -- I will leave that for another blog. I mean practically. Practically for the movie industry in India and outside and what kind of opportunities is this creating for Indians and NRIs. This is what I want to explore in this blog and would like to start by hearing from others. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and sharing mine.
2 comments:
To some extent Bollywood films are concerned with feelings, emotions, caring or not caring because culturally these are values that Hollywood left behind many years ago. It is true many of these Bollywood films do not make big money but might never get filmed in Hollywood let alone released. I am thinking of PAYBACK in which a gangster saves a guy's life after a horrible car crash that everyone else drove by. Then he has help the gangster in return when his life is threatened. The story may not work but where else would you see that kind of sensitivity or Talaash about loss of a person, of a relationship or of potential, possibility or opportunity? As Bollywood becomes more Westernized in content and sensibility, you will see fewer of these films but such story characteristics in Bollywood films are a strength, not weakness. Hollywood films are becoming badly knit together extended action scenes with minimal back story and detail rendering much of these films meaninglessness into a high grossing mishmash of thrilling eye ear candy. Indian expatriates never seem to have fully lost the core values of Indian sensitivity so thought or character driven film is not wasted on them.
Thus Indian screenwriters, Thus and directors will be able to offer Hollywood studios with Classics divisions the opportunity to produce character or problem driven films on the order of Like Stars on Earth or Slumdog Millionaire that American cinema is starving for. Particularly if they can form a network to that sets up relationships with American counterparts inside already established Classics Divisions with either Independent or Hollywood studios production teams it possible. Probably very difficult but not impossible. There is also the possibility of networking with Hindi speaking expatriates already working inside Hollywood studio.
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