Long way for Indian films to gain acceptability in world

Panaji, Nov 26: Indian cinema has still a long way to go in terms of acceptability in the rest of the world, felt the International sales agents during a conference at the CII's Film Bazaar at the ongoing 37th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) here today.

Francois Da Silva of the France based Europa Corp narrated his unsuccessful trip to Mumbai two years ago, where he tried to build a long term conversation and partnership with few filmmakers who in turn spoke only money and business.

He said Indian filmmakers have to be less complicated and more communicative. It is a fact that except the Indian diaspora, non-Indians know nothing about Indian stars and cinema.

Da Silva and Helder Dcosta from Latin America say that Satyajit Ray is more popular than Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai among non-Indians.

Da Silva says Indian film content is largely local like Brazilian films which have not travelled outside their own diaspora.

''Cinema will transcend boundaries only when filmmakers speak to their own people and at the same time also to the world through their creativity. Cinema is not just only business,'' he added.

US based Krishna Shah was of the opinion that West cannot understand the ethos of Indian music and dance in films.

''It was Raj Kapoor who popularised music in countries like Russia and Greece. Indian filmmakers only recently realised the potential of an overseas market. Over 50 per cent of the revenue comes from overseas as 40 million Indian diaspora makes these movies economically viable,'' Mr Shah said.

Cinematic language transcends all boundaries and the non-Indians would love to see such films from India, he added. Mr Shah said a good Indian film can attract foreigners despite its song and dance sequences.

D Costa said he had purchased ''Krrish'' recently for the Latin American market which he felt was visually more beautiful than Superman. He was of the view that Indian films need to be more innovative in terms of genre and format to catch the eye of the West.

According to Da Silva, in the last five years only two films ''Lagaan'' and ''Devdas'' have got comprehensive theatrical release in France.

''Hollywood has the capacity to attract talent from other countries and Bollywood too should do that. He said it would be wrong to state that Indian cinema does not need outside viewers because it has enough audience within the country. If you have to grow, you should involve different cultures. The content can be local but it should speak to the world at large,'' he added.

Da Costa said if regional films are not promoted in India, it is not the fault of outsiders who cannot notice their prominence.

Stating that the film bazaar at the ongoing festival is too small, he said the need of the hour was to fly in key buyers from abroad and organise buyer-filmmakers meetings to make the bazaar productive in the real sense.

Bertrand Moullier, a researcher on Indian cinema for his client ''Creative Innovative Economic Centre'' in Washington said the overwhelming dominance of Bollywood brand in Indian cinema was baffling even when only 200 films out of the total 950 annually came from that stable.

He said that Bollywood films lacked genre. A thought echoed by Da Costa who said of the few Bollywood films he had watched in India, many were copies of Hollywood like Romeo Juliet, Shakespeare stories.

Moullier said he was surprised to find the phenomenal star status of Rajnikant in the south where the screen is freeze framed when the star makes an appearance so that his fans can pay their respects to his picture in theatres.

D Costa said he had liked movies like Veer Zara, American Daylight and Rising.

Ashok Jain of Indian film exporters Association said mainstream cinema was commercially oriented and not artistic oriented. ''We have still to get the format right,'' he added.

UNI