06-01-2007, 12:29 AM
Bollywood breaches borders
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Engaging India: Bollywood breaches borders
By Farhan Bokhari, Islamabad correspondent
Published: April 12 2007 02:19 | Last updated: April 12 2007 02:19
Farhan Bokhari
Engaging India is a weekly online column analysing the issues, trends and forces behind the business and politics shaping India and its impact on the world, which appears on FT.com India, a dedicated online section on India. Engaging India appears every Thursday morning exclusively on FT.com India and is written by Jo Johnson, the Financial Timesâ South Asia bureau chief; Amy Yee, New Delhi correspondent; Joe Leahy, Mumbai correspondent; and Farhan Bokhari, Islamabad correspondent.
India and its largest South Asian neighbour, Pakistan, may be adversaries, but not so when it comes to cinema going. The acrimonious history between the two countries has failed to remove the overwhelming evidence of Indiaâs successful invasion of the hearts and minds of Pakistanâs film viewers.
Almost one-third of the roughly 1,100 films produced in India last year came from Bollywood, the centre of Indian cinema, which is in Mumbai, the large bustling city and hub of Indiaâs business world.
Businesses reaching out to consumers in the Indian market could benefit from seizing the many opportunities for collaboration with Bollywood, not to forget the use of Indian cinema as an advertising vehicle. Indiaâs film industry revenue was about $1.75b last year and is forecast to double by 2010. Increasingly, films are moving away from traditionally modest budgets toward the expenditure standards set by Hollywood.
Branding India through its cinema is a powerful fact of life which has helped to promote images of India even in countries where films are dubbed for the local audience.
For a close account of Indiaâs influence over film viewers in its surrounding region, walk into any video store in Pakistan, whether in a large city or a remote village and you are bound to see Indian film posters prominently displayed right at the entrance.
There are no consolidated figures on the sale of Indian films in the Pakistani market. The cheapest pirated copies of Indian films are sold at prices as low as Rs60($1), which attracts even poorer Pakistanis. For Pakistan slum-dwellers, affordable entertainment on a Saturday night comes easily through pooling a portion of an otherwise paltry dayâs wage for watching an Indian film.
Such enthusiasm in Pakistan has grown over the years. Indian films were effectively banned for a time in the 1970s. But 30 years later, nobody seems to know if there are still laws against watching films from India.
Indian cinema has come to Pakistan and for the foreseeable future appears well poised to stay. Even baton-wielding Islamists will ultimately find it impossible to browbeat Pakistani viewers into submission. Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, is these days in the midst of much disquiet since an Islamic prayer leader demanded the closure of all stores stocking foreign CDs and DVDs, especially those from India, on the grounds that they promote obscenity.
For those who are still unconvinced of the passion shared by viewers of Indian films, a journey back in time to Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban serves a useful lesson. At the peak of the Talibanâs power in the late 1990s when cinema viewers were targeted along with other fun seekers, truckers from neighbouring Pakistan would regularly line up in front of welding shops before crossing the Afghan border as they sought to insert a metal partition to divide their fuel tanks in two. One part would then carry fuel while the other served as a convenient spot for hiding Indian film video cassettes and VCDs.
During this time, a poster of Madhuri Dixit, the well-known Indian actress, fetched about Rs300($5) on the sidewalks of the Pakistani frontier town Peshawar, a price just marginally below the cost of an Osama bin Laden poster. Even the rising passion for âjihadâ (holy war) could not push Ms Dixitâs appeal below second place among avid movie watchers.
Hindi, the principle language spoken in India and the medium for most Bollywood films, sounds similar to Urdu, Pakistanâs main language, although the two use vastly different scripts. Even for an illiterate Pakistani cinema viewer, following the language of Indian films has never been an issue. But the quality of Indian films and their fast growing global appeal are added factors which must count toward their success.
Evidence of the appeal of Indian cinema can also be found in Dubai, the only Middle Eastern city where Urdu and Hindi are as commonly spoken as Arabic. Itâs difficult to find taxi drivers averse to tuning in to local stations airing Indian film music in an obvious indication of its popularity.
<b>âIndiaâs economic progress is largely responsible for Indian films getting recognized abroad. When the economy is doing well, everything connected with the country, its food, culture, colour, art and films get noticed,â claimed Amitabh Bachan, Indiaâs most famous film actor, last month.
</b>
The challenge for the future will be two-fold. For businesses keen to reach out to the viewers of Indian films, finding unique and even previously untested methods of putting out marketing messages could present opportunities and challenges. The other challenge is finding opportunities for tie-ups with mainstream Western film production houses and perhaps eventually producing a steady stream of films in English.
More importantly, cinema works to promote Indian interests tied to its diplomacy, culture and economy. If Indian cinema could invade film screens in neighbouring Pakistan literally without firing a shot and penetrate as far as Taliban-dominated Afghanistan, it deserves to be commended. And no occasion serves that need more than the celebrations surrounding India as it turns 60 this August.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Engaging India: Bollywood breaches borders
By Farhan Bokhari, Islamabad correspondent
Published: April 12 2007 02:19 | Last updated: April 12 2007 02:19
Farhan Bokhari
Engaging India is a weekly online column analysing the issues, trends and forces behind the business and politics shaping India and its impact on the world, which appears on FT.com India, a dedicated online section on India. Engaging India appears every Thursday morning exclusively on FT.com India and is written by Jo Johnson, the Financial Timesâ South Asia bureau chief; Amy Yee, New Delhi correspondent; Joe Leahy, Mumbai correspondent; and Farhan Bokhari, Islamabad correspondent.
India and its largest South Asian neighbour, Pakistan, may be adversaries, but not so when it comes to cinema going. The acrimonious history between the two countries has failed to remove the overwhelming evidence of Indiaâs successful invasion of the hearts and minds of Pakistanâs film viewers.
Almost one-third of the roughly 1,100 films produced in India last year came from Bollywood, the centre of Indian cinema, which is in Mumbai, the large bustling city and hub of Indiaâs business world.
Businesses reaching out to consumers in the Indian market could benefit from seizing the many opportunities for collaboration with Bollywood, not to forget the use of Indian cinema as an advertising vehicle. Indiaâs film industry revenue was about $1.75b last year and is forecast to double by 2010. Increasingly, films are moving away from traditionally modest budgets toward the expenditure standards set by Hollywood.
Branding India through its cinema is a powerful fact of life which has helped to promote images of India even in countries where films are dubbed for the local audience.
For a close account of Indiaâs influence over film viewers in its surrounding region, walk into any video store in Pakistan, whether in a large city or a remote village and you are bound to see Indian film posters prominently displayed right at the entrance.
There are no consolidated figures on the sale of Indian films in the Pakistani market. The cheapest pirated copies of Indian films are sold at prices as low as Rs60($1), which attracts even poorer Pakistanis. For Pakistan slum-dwellers, affordable entertainment on a Saturday night comes easily through pooling a portion of an otherwise paltry dayâs wage for watching an Indian film.
Such enthusiasm in Pakistan has grown over the years. Indian films were effectively banned for a time in the 1970s. But 30 years later, nobody seems to know if there are still laws against watching films from India.
Indian cinema has come to Pakistan and for the foreseeable future appears well poised to stay. Even baton-wielding Islamists will ultimately find it impossible to browbeat Pakistani viewers into submission. Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, is these days in the midst of much disquiet since an Islamic prayer leader demanded the closure of all stores stocking foreign CDs and DVDs, especially those from India, on the grounds that they promote obscenity.
For those who are still unconvinced of the passion shared by viewers of Indian films, a journey back in time to Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban serves a useful lesson. At the peak of the Talibanâs power in the late 1990s when cinema viewers were targeted along with other fun seekers, truckers from neighbouring Pakistan would regularly line up in front of welding shops before crossing the Afghan border as they sought to insert a metal partition to divide their fuel tanks in two. One part would then carry fuel while the other served as a convenient spot for hiding Indian film video cassettes and VCDs.
During this time, a poster of Madhuri Dixit, the well-known Indian actress, fetched about Rs300($5) on the sidewalks of the Pakistani frontier town Peshawar, a price just marginally below the cost of an Osama bin Laden poster. Even the rising passion for âjihadâ (holy war) could not push Ms Dixitâs appeal below second place among avid movie watchers.
Hindi, the principle language spoken in India and the medium for most Bollywood films, sounds similar to Urdu, Pakistanâs main language, although the two use vastly different scripts. Even for an illiterate Pakistani cinema viewer, following the language of Indian films has never been an issue. But the quality of Indian films and their fast growing global appeal are added factors which must count toward their success.
Evidence of the appeal of Indian cinema can also be found in Dubai, the only Middle Eastern city where Urdu and Hindi are as commonly spoken as Arabic. Itâs difficult to find taxi drivers averse to tuning in to local stations airing Indian film music in an obvious indication of its popularity.
<b>âIndiaâs economic progress is largely responsible for Indian films getting recognized abroad. When the economy is doing well, everything connected with the country, its food, culture, colour, art and films get noticed,â claimed Amitabh Bachan, Indiaâs most famous film actor, last month.
</b>
The challenge for the future will be two-fold. For businesses keen to reach out to the viewers of Indian films, finding unique and even previously untested methods of putting out marketing messages could present opportunities and challenges. The other challenge is finding opportunities for tie-ups with mainstream Western film production houses and perhaps eventually producing a steady stream of films in English.
More importantly, cinema works to promote Indian interests tied to its diplomacy, culture and economy. If Indian cinema could invade film screens in neighbouring Pakistan literally without firing a shot and penetrate as far as Taliban-dominated Afghanistan, it deserves to be commended. And no occasion serves that need more than the celebrations surrounding India as it turns 60 this August.
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