Posts with tag Bollywood

“Life is more than shopping!”. We zick-zack the streets of Bangalore in a rickshaw to go back to the hotel and try, like a number of times today, to explain to the driver that we are not interested in going shopping. Every driver knows where the best shopping is, something usually coinciding with where they have friends, and they try to drive us there. Business is made in every corner in this around 10 million-people city. The Silicon Valley of India, as many call it, is full of contradictions.

“One billion people have two billion opinions!”, they tell us at Suchitra Cinema and Cultural Academy. “it’s not possible to agree”, they say with a laugh, “There are contradictions everywhere. Just look outside”. Suchitra Cinema and Cultural Academy run a filmfestival with films from all over the world, show around 100 screenings a year, have filmpolitical discussions, workshops and, together with this, teach languages.

The film industry in India is, as they put it, a “Masala industry”. The large Bollywood productions has taken over, which makes it hard for smaller films to get distributed and recognised as an important part of the industry. Together with a lack of strong film policy and also of theoretical framework, analysis and film critics, the alternative filmmaking struggle with difficulties. A start would be to arrange training and education that is not only very practical as today, but also teaches a theoretical framework to give coming filmmakers, producers and editors tools for analysis and context.

We are introduced to the three ways of cooporation you need: 1) internal cooperation within your organisation, 2) corporate and public cooperation (you will need to balance between both these, specifically in the India context), and 3) cooperation on a local and international level.