India, which gained independence from the British Empire in 1947 and was once described as the jewel in Queen Victoria's crown has, in many ways, kept close links to the Mother Country. One of them is through its national film industry - the largest in the world - in which Britain is its favourite foreign backdrop.
And now Britain has become Bollywood's biggest market outside India, and it's not only Brits of Indian descent who are flocking to watch Indian movies....
Bollywood comes to Yorkshire
Indian takeaway
Jun 7th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Britain is Indian cinema's favourite backdrop—and biggest foreign market
CANNES, Sundance, Venice—and now Castleford. This weekend the former mining town plays film-festival host, as India's “Bollywood” industry decamps to Yorkshire for the annual Oscar-style awards that are watched on television by some 500m people around the world. The county pipped New York, Barcelona and Sydney thanks to its rolling countryside, organisers boast. Castleford will kick off proceedings before the action moves to Sheffield. The highlight may well be a bizarre cricket clash that will see Ed Balls, the economic secretary to the Treasury, bowl his worst against a team of Bollywood heart-throbs.
PA
The stuff of dreams: Indian dancers in London's Trafalgar Square
The biggest names in Indian film will be there, including Amitabh Bachchan to inaugurate the match and Shilpa Shetty to preside over the opening coin-toss. Yet one of the most recognisable Bollywood stars is Britain itself. Some 20 Indian movies a year are partly filmed on British soil, usually around London but sometimes as far afield as the Scottish Highlands, which occasionally doubles as Kashmir when the real thing is too dicey. This has contributed to a rush of Indian tourists, who now outnumber Japanese. Tourist boards distribute maps of film locations, and Madame Tussaud's waxworks museum has knocked up a set of Bollywood likenesses.
Overseas filming has been a Bollywood staple since the 1970s, when any respectable flick included an Alpine frolicking sequence. But these days foreign storylines also go down well with international viewers—especially in Britain, the biggest Bollywood market outside India. The spread of multiplex cinemas, which can show niche films thanks to their large number of smallish screens, has helped business. The top-grossing Bollywood film in Britain last year, “Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna” (“Never Say Goodbye”), was shown on 60 screens; the top film of 1998 only made it to 20.
Britain's 2.6m Asians provide the core of the audience, but there are signs that other Britons are getting into Bollywood too. Sabbas Joseph, a director of India's film academy, says that about a quarter of the fans at premieres in Britain are non-Asian, a pattern he says has emerged in the past decade. Raj and Pablo, a double act who present the weekly “Love Bollywood” show on BBC radio's Asian Network, reckon a third of their listeners are non-Asian too.
Courting Westerners (and young Asians) has not diluted the Bollywood formula much. “It's an acquired taste. Even the modern ones usually feature song and dance, no kissing and are three hours long,” says Helen O'Hara of Empire, a mainstream film magazine. Instead of changing its style, Bollywood is upping the production values. “Dhoom 2”, last year's big action blockbuster, is as slick as most American efforts.
But raunchiness is creeping in too. Two leading actors are fighting an obscenity case lodged against them in India for an on-screen kiss. Amusing to Western viewers—yet Britain is to blame, argue Raj and Pablo, since this primness is inherited from British Imperial days. They make a persuasive point: “Which country invented the ‘Kama Sutra’?”
economist.com
And now Britain has become Bollywood's biggest market outside India, and it's not only Brits of Indian descent who are flocking to watch Indian movies....
Bollywood comes to Yorkshire
Indian takeaway
Jun 7th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Britain is Indian cinema's favourite backdrop—and biggest foreign market
CANNES, Sundance, Venice—and now Castleford. This weekend the former mining town plays film-festival host, as India's “Bollywood” industry decamps to Yorkshire for the annual Oscar-style awards that are watched on television by some 500m people around the world. The county pipped New York, Barcelona and Sydney thanks to its rolling countryside, organisers boast. Castleford will kick off proceedings before the action moves to Sheffield. The highlight may well be a bizarre cricket clash that will see Ed Balls, the economic secretary to the Treasury, bowl his worst against a team of Bollywood heart-throbs.
PA
The stuff of dreams: Indian dancers in London's Trafalgar Square
The biggest names in Indian film will be there, including Amitabh Bachchan to inaugurate the match and Shilpa Shetty to preside over the opening coin-toss. Yet one of the most recognisable Bollywood stars is Britain itself. Some 20 Indian movies a year are partly filmed on British soil, usually around London but sometimes as far afield as the Scottish Highlands, which occasionally doubles as Kashmir when the real thing is too dicey. This has contributed to a rush of Indian tourists, who now outnumber Japanese. Tourist boards distribute maps of film locations, and Madame Tussaud's waxworks museum has knocked up a set of Bollywood likenesses.
Overseas filming has been a Bollywood staple since the 1970s, when any respectable flick included an Alpine frolicking sequence. But these days foreign storylines also go down well with international viewers—especially in Britain, the biggest Bollywood market outside India. The spread of multiplex cinemas, which can show niche films thanks to their large number of smallish screens, has helped business. The top-grossing Bollywood film in Britain last year, “Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna” (“Never Say Goodbye”), was shown on 60 screens; the top film of 1998 only made it to 20.
Britain's 2.6m Asians provide the core of the audience, but there are signs that other Britons are getting into Bollywood too. Sabbas Joseph, a director of India's film academy, says that about a quarter of the fans at premieres in Britain are non-Asian, a pattern he says has emerged in the past decade. Raj and Pablo, a double act who present the weekly “Love Bollywood” show on BBC radio's Asian Network, reckon a third of their listeners are non-Asian too.
Courting Westerners (and young Asians) has not diluted the Bollywood formula much. “It's an acquired taste. Even the modern ones usually feature song and dance, no kissing and are three hours long,” says Helen O'Hara of Empire, a mainstream film magazine. Instead of changing its style, Bollywood is upping the production values. “Dhoom 2”, last year's big action blockbuster, is as slick as most American efforts.
But raunchiness is creeping in too. Two leading actors are fighting an obscenity case lodged against them in India for an on-screen kiss. Amusing to Western viewers—yet Britain is to blame, argue Raj and Pablo, since this primness is inherited from British Imperial days. They make a persuasive point: “Which country invented the ‘Kama Sutra’?”
economist.com
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