Tarakash Josh! : A website for Youth!

Armando Halder

There was a time when Indian movies were made fun of in the west for its song & dance format movies, but today things are changing and so is the outlook towards Indian movies. The Indian film industry especially Bollywood (Hindi film industry) is a growing colossus with the world’s largest box-office market - around 3,100 million people - watching its films each year.

Since the deregulation of Indian economy in 1991, Indian cinema has steadily increased its box-office revenue both at home and abroad, and poses a major challenge to Hollywood’s golden crown - Bollywood produces around 900 films a year, while Hollywood produces around 600 films a year. It’s funny, to note that Indian movies make more money at UK box-office than British movies. The 2006 hit film Krissh, for example, opened at number nine in the UK and grossed US$19 million at the box-office worldwide.

So the question arises what really is the appeal of Indian movies to the non-Indian audiences? Indian movies have love, emotions, values, etc. all mixed up in their themes, which appeal both to the conservative Middle Eastern society as well as to the more open societies of west. But the key change has been the more global outlook of the Indian film industry, which promotes its movies more aggressively today. Indian producers have taken good care to create their own strong distribution networks in various countries.

With Bollywood being welcomed to newer markets it won’t be a surprise if within a few years’ time India starts producing its own English movies. Not only this, in coming years one could see Indian film studios co-producing English movies and big Hollywood studios producing Indian movies.

But as the industry is growing there has been a clear shift from small experimental films to less risky more profitable films. This shift clearly shows that Bollywood might be going the Hollywood way where there is no room for small-independent- creative films. The Indian cinema is now focusing more on profit-maximization and in the process loosing its own individuality somewhere.

Post-1991 changes in the government policies have virtually driven out small producers and brought in large studios which control the entire filmmaking and distribution process. This has been proved by the rise of multiplex cinemas which provide nearly 65% of the total box-office revenue in India but constitutes just 5% of the total cinema screens.

Indian cinema must remember that “It needs to be sensitive to diversity; otherwise what the difference between Hollywood and Us is?”