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 | An introduction to popular Indian cinema (Part One) by Roy Stafford Bollywood is everywhere. The films themselves continue to sit proudly in the UK box office charts, the BFI's Imagine Asia hopes to introduce new audiences to South Asian Cinema, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay musical opens in London and journalists all want to jump on the bandwagon. All this is good for the broadening of UK film culture, but it also involves a fair amount of potentially misleading writing about the object of our attention. Indian film culture in all its glory is a wonderful thing, but it is not consistently documented in the ways in which we have become accustomed to view Hollywood and the British film industry. This makes any form of comparison difficult and presents problems for film scholars. One fact seems uncontestable. India makes more films each year than any other country. The table below shows that since 1995 Indian cinema has experienced the same trends that were seen in the West in the 1960s -- falling admissions, but rising revenues. Films are still seen by vast audiences in auditoria ranging from newly-opened multiplexes to mobile cinemas in villages (some 3,000). Ticket prices vary enormously, but, overall revenue is low by American standards -- £1 billion box office is produced by 3 billion admissions. These are the basic facts. But for audiences in the UK without Hindi language skills and direct knowledge of the range of Indian cinema, these facts have to be reconciled with limited exposure to no more than a handful of 'Bollywood' films.
Indian Cinema statistics 1995-2000 (from Dodona Research, published in Screen International, 7/12/01) (£1 = 70 Rupees approx.)
Since the late 1990s a significant change in Bollywood production has taken place. New cinema building in India has attracted the affluent middle class in the major cities such as Mumbai and Delhi ('middle class' does not mean the same in India as in the UK, 'upper middle class' might be more appropriate) to a new wave of major productions, but these are also aimed at the NRI ('non-resident Indian) market in the UK and North America. The NRI market is tiny in number (by comparison with the total Indian audience) -- perhaps 4 million -- but ticket prices are much higher. Khabi Khushi Kabhie Gham (or 'K3G') took $3 million in the UK and again in North America. It was this revenue which put the film into profit given an Indian box office of 250 million rupees (about £3.6 million) and a budget of 350 million rupees. '3KG' was a commercial success because of its appeal to the affluent sector of Indian society at home and abroad (where the NRI are much closer in social profile terms to the Hollywood audience). By contrast, certain Hollywood blockbusters such as Speed (US 1994) are seen as relatively 'downmarket' in India, but this means that they can take more money ($10 million perhaps -- Screen International 8/3/2002) than a film more clearly geared to the NRI audience. Hollywood sends around 100 films to India each year but few make much money and India is not yet a major market for Hollywood.
Bombay cinema thus has a particular political significance in its use of language, since the designation of Hindi to replace English as the official language in the 1960s was fiercely opposed in the South of India with its different language groups. If the dialogue of Bombay cinema is artificial, so is much of the world it represents -- indeed 'Bombay' still exists for many in the film industry, even though in the real world, its name has changed to Mumbai. . . . Hindi cinema's culture is quite different from India's culture, but it is not alien to usas a matter of fact, Hindi cinema is our closest neighbour. It has it's own world, its own traditions, its own symbols, and those who are familiar with it understand it. (Screenwriter Javed Akhtar, 2002)
The South is the hotbed of Indian cinema with 60% of all Indian screens located in the four Southern states (Arthur Anderson Consultants 2001). These four so-called 'regional cinemas' surpass Bollywood in productions, but do not have the same profile throughout the country nor abroad (even though there is a large Tamil diaspora in Malaysia and Singapore, UK, Canada and Australia etc.). To be appreciated elsewhere than in their home state, films in these languages need to be dubbed. This is happens to a small number of films and recently some of the significant Tamil directors such as Mani Ratnam and Ram Gopal Varma have seen their films dubbed in Hindi. This has led some critics to argue that Bollywood and Tamil cinema are both simply different production contexts within 'Indian popular cinema'. It is certainly true that both cinemas share an approach to traditional Indian forms and a range of uniquely Indian film conventions, not least the use of music and dance. Yet a comparison between a Karan Johar film like K3G or the earlier Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (India 1998) and a Mani Ratnam title such as Alai Payuthey (Waves) (India 2000) reveals a very different approach to the portrayal of the Indian class system and the realities of love and marriage. Ratnam's earlier film, released in Hindi as Dil Se (From the Heart) (India 1998) opened simultaneously in Mumbai, London and New York and announced a unique talent to a wider audience.
Regional films have a smaller potential audience and must usually contend with smaller budgets. Some production is strictly commercial, some has more of a cultural agenda. With the exception of a small number of filmmakers who have achieved success on the international festival circuit, few regional productions are seen outside India.
With this kind of support, a new sector opened up for films that were more socially aware and formally owed more to aesthetics developed in international cinema than in Bollywood. Some of the filmmakers who worked in this new sector, especially in the 1970s, used their own regional language (such as Adoor Gopalakrishnan in Malayalam), others worked in different regional languages (Mrinal Sen) and some, the more commercially orientated such as Shyam Benegal, worked in Hindi. Benegal in particular was seen to produce films that were 'parallel to Bollywood', formally accessible rather than 'art cinema', but using different conventions. The New Cinema was most prolific up to the early 1980s when the changes in Indian politics and economics ushered in a greater commercial imperative. Nevertheless there are vestiges of the parallel cinema that can be traced through contemporary production and we can still distinguish three main types of Indian film, dominant popular Indian cinema in Hindi and the Southern languages, 'regional films' more generally and a small number of more art-orientated films.
Some recent Bollywood films, including Asoka (Momentum) and Lagaan (Sony) are distributed in the UK through companies that deal with Hollywood cinema. So is The Terrorist (Tartan) a small independent film that harks back to New Indian Cinema. K3G and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai are distributed by Yash Raj Films (www.yashrajfilms.com), as is Shyam Benegal's Zubeidaa, a film that lies somewhere between Bollywood and the old parallel cinema. These films can be found in HMV. Mail order only is more likely for Alai Payuthey from the Tamil film specialist Ayngaran on www.ayngaran.com. The best source of information on what is available is the website of DVD Reviewer at www.dvdreviewer.co.uk
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