KABIR ARORA
With nearly 800 films produced in India every year, India is the largest film production market in the world in terms of number of films produced. Although many good regional language films are also produced in India, Bollywood-the Hindi Film Industry is still the main hub for Indian films.
Despite churning out a large number of films, India’s share is a poor 5% in the global film market of an estimated US $38 billion out of which Hollywood alone rakes in nearly US $32 billion. Bollywood mainly operates at pathetically low performance parameters. It’s still an ‘okay’ business even at a dismal scale for Bollywood film companies, most of which are run like by a few old actors and their family members. No matter how much you avoid relating nepotism with this issue, it still is among the main reasons. Because of many of these old clans, many independent artists are not able to enter or flourish in the industry. As a result, Bollywood films are so bad in quality that they run for a few days at local theatres and halls frequented by moviegoers who don’t understand the meaning of quality content. We feed them with bad content week in week out that they can’t really differentiate between a good movie and a bad one.
There was a time when the world audience was keen on watching Indian films because everyone felt that Indian films were inspiring, full of humanism and universality which the films in the West lacked. Directors like Satyajit Ray, Bimal Roy, Ritwik Ghatak were pioneers and put Indian Cinema on the global map. Particularly Ray, his work has inspired generation of filmmakers; within India and abroad. Akira Kurasowa once said “Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.”
Recently when sci-fi genius Christopher Nolan came to India he said “I have had the pleasure of watching Mr Ray’s Pather Panchali recently, which I hadn’t seen before. I think it is one of the best films ever made. It is an extraordinary piece of work. I am interested in learning more about Indian film industry and that is the reason why I came.” But the sad part is that over the years we have lost that credibility and if Mr. Nolan digs a little deep, he’ll surely regret his decision.
Particularly most of the Bollywood films are made like a food recipe having a few meaningless songs with crude dances, some foolishly inserted fight scenes, without any constructive storyline – just to lure the gullible Indian consumers-the film audience. A film in India is like a circus show – repeated under different film titles. As films are made with dummy directors in just a few weeks using the archaic formula, it was bound to happen that they lose the global appeal.