Indian cinema, the largest by volume and the second largest by value in the world, turns a grand and graceful old lady of 100 years. Although there is a lot of talk about the occasion, I’d rather look at the next few years ahead of us.
Before I deal with that, however, I must emphasize on the need to celebrate the century of Indian cinema all through 2012 till the middle or end of 2013. Indian cinema in general, and Bollywood in particular, has reached out to more viewers than we would have imagined till sometime ago. I remember how school kids in Sasamara in remote Ethiopia chased me and my shooting team, while I was on a field-trip during my stint in WHO Geneva, shouting “Shahrukh, Kajol …” the moment they knew we were from India. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was fresh then.
We must celebrate this occasion everywhere, in Dubai, London, New York, Trinidad, Mauritius, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, and wherever we can. I will try to explore that possibility in the months ahead, more so, through the Indian Diaspora media, New Global Indian that I am associated with.
The makers of Indian cinema need to accept that, globally, their films haven’t made a serious impact on the majority of film watchers. Although watched by unlikely viewers in unusual countries – I was astonished in Ethopia, as I said before – their works haven’t become the cinema of choice of non-Indians yet. Avatar from Hollywood earned USD 7 billion worldwide in 27 languages, and only one-third of it in USA. The day 3 Idiots or Ra.One gets dubbed in multiple languages with income from abroad exceeding that from within India, we can safely assert that we have arrived. As of now, we have a long way to go. Experimentation has to be the new mantra. This can happen only if stardom makes way for actor-and-story-based low-budget films like Paan Singh Tomar, The Dirty Picture, Kahaani, Vicky Donor, I Am Kalam, Stanley Ka Dabba, and so on. That many such films were released recently is encouraging, more so since most of them earned a lot more than what was spent on them.
Linked with this trend is the concept of making films customized for the multiplex audiences, as some of the examples mentioned above show. Then, films are specially made for the Indian Diaspora, a quality also seen through films of Dharma Productions and Yashraj Films largely. Finally, stars need to experiment, a la Paa and Cheeni Kum directed by R Balki and starring Amitabh Bachchan, Taare Zameen Par made by Aamir Khan, etc. Masala flicks like Rowdy Rathore will get released and succeed too, but those for the discerning audiences will have their space as well.
Interestingly, digital filmmaking for the big screen, customized filmmaking for the television, and more radically, for the convergent mobile or Ipad or for inflight entertainment will change our way of telling stories. Three-hour-long films aren’t sacrosanct already. After having moved towards the making of 100-minute-long films, New Media will give rise to films that are shorter than an hour and have a market of their own. Digital production is bringing down costs heavily, leading to what people term as the ‘democratization of cinema’. I am looking forward to more of that in future.
I also look forward to more global, multinational or transnational films with Indian content at the core. Say, a film on how a poor rural Bihari young adult had gone to a Caribbean or African nation as an indentured labourer a century ago. Three generations later, his granddaughter fights a socio-political battle and becomes the Prime Minister of that nation. Such a film is not completely Indian, yet, nobody can say that it is not Indian. Truly global, diasporic, transnational.
Finally, I look forward to the day when the iron wall of Bollywood will disintegrate. While the filmy czars and their families will produce mass films, remakes and risky high-budget flicks, the new generation of filmmakers and perceptive film marketers will tackle and market an equal number of films on subjects related to dalit and workers’ movements, peasants’ lives, little known communities, homosexuals and transgenders.
Till that happens, let the new generation of would-be filmmakers and marketers dream the impossible, learn and do the same!
