<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">in a new advertisement, of a genre which is trying to marry the popularity of cricket with that of movies, hrithik roshan tries to hit saurav ganguly for a six. having failed, he then picks up a baseball bat, turns his cap around, and hits the ball almost outside the stadium. another post-<span style="" font-style:="" italic="">lagaan </span>lesson surely (which itself cashed in on the magic mix of the country’s twin passions): if you want to play in the big league, you better play by the big man’s rules. more than ever, that is the crossroads at which the indian film industry finds itself. should bollywood (a term which glosses over the fact that only 23 per cent of the 1,013 films made in 2001 were in hindi) go the way of the australian film industry, ending up as a vast cattle station for the great american dream machine? or should we remain the titans of our turf, growing into a powerhouse which will eventually export the indian sensibility to a wider audience? should we celebrate the fact raj kapoor, the original maestro of the song and dance, will have his very own retrospective at cannes this year? or should we bemoan the fact that lagaan lost out at the oscars because american voters could understand neither cricket nor javed akhtar’s <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">avadhi </span>as sung by aamir khan and company? it’s a question on which the future of indian cinema rests. for, while the preponderance of antipodean accents at the oscars this year would seem to suggest that russell crowe’s twin nations, australia and new zealand, have conquered the world, the truth is that australian film production is not exactly booming — even the australian film finance commission, the principal source of finance for film and tv, allowed funding of only 13 feature films in the 1999-2000 budget. what has increased instead is work done for hollywood, whether it’s providing locations or crew for movies such as <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">mission impossible ii </span>and <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">the matrix</span>. most major australian directors, from peter weir to philip noyce, have fled home to work in hollywood, leaving almost no one to work on high budget influential made-in-oz films. this has also meant that hollywood’s share of australian eyeballs has risen in direct proportion to the apparent growing importance of down under in america. while australian films took 23.8 per cent of the australian box office in 1988, in 2001, it was down to only 7.8 per cent of the total earnings. much of even this figure, which called for considerable newspaper acreage being expended on the ‘‘resurgence of oz’’ was because of moulin rouge, a film shot entirely at naturalised american rupert murdoch’s fox studios in sydney. clearly, one crowe does not a summer make. the real challenge then is in terms of content. should hindi cinema go the way of <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">kaante </span>or should it join the company? let’s take <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">kaante</span>. a rip-off of <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">reservoir dogs</span>, the soon-to-be-released movie was shot entirely in los angeles with an american crew, and is being hailed as the start of a new wave in film-making. but do we really want to pay good money to see amitabh bachchan essaying the role of the tiny harvey keitel? now, take ram gopal verma’s <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">company</span>, another forthcoming movie. a completely <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">desi </span>take on the organised world of crime in mumbai, its diction is <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">mumbaiya </span>and its feel completely gritty. clearly, the handshake with hollywood is nothing short of a faustian pact. but there is a movie business that bollywood can use as a model, not in the least because like india, non-resident chinese are, in enormous numbers, thirsty for a taste of home. after all, the kung-fu movie, which hong kong has been churning out for 30 years, is as intrinsic to it as naach-gana is to bollywood. hong kong has acquired such expertise in it that it has even exported it, with a few modifications, to hollywood, making unlikely international stars of jackie chan and jet li. its stylised violence has almost the same rhythm as our lavish song sequences, yet the latter hasn’t acquired its mass following. moreover, even when hong kong directors such as john woo — whose 1992 film hard boiled is much imitated in the west even now — moved to hollywood, they’ve made films inspired by their own themes. and though hong kong is fighting american domination, it’s not doing too badly: over 130 hong kong films shown last year accounted for 47 per cent of the domestic box office revenue. what’s more, the movie industry there not only has foreign investment from taiwan but also big production houses such as golden harvest, china star and mandarin films, which are a far cry from our one-man brands. what india has is the advantage of not having given hollywood even an inch. in 2000, hollywood managed to earn just rs 35 crore in india, which is less than one per cent of the total revenue bollywood makes (and which is less than what bollywood movies make abroad, which last year was rs 52 crore). what the film industry can export is the indian idiom, possible only if it remains true to it. this is not to suggest that the yash chopra school of chiffon romances should prevail, but let style find a more realistic equation with content. music is our strength, as andrew lloyd webber is hoping to discover. so why axe its depiction because it’s conventional wisdom in hollywood? for, if bollywood attempts to give up its core competence in trying to get that elusive oscar, we could end up as just an export house, sending our stars there and bringing their backroom technical work here. surely, an industry which according to ficci is growing at an amazing average of 15 per cent every year deserves better than this. it also deserves to be in synergy with a sector that’s growing even faster, television. look at the creative sparks that fly between film and television in britain. their biggest export, hughtopia (a combination of hugh grant-richard curtis-london setting which always hits the bullseye in the us), is indeed as much a product of its television as it is of its film. while no one is suggesting that the ailing british film industry is the way to go for india, its synthesis of talent — which often extends to the stage as in the case of directors such as <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">american beauty</span>’s sam mendes — is worth following. otherwise <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">lagaan </span>could just end up as a false dawn, as <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">chariots of fire </span>was for britain. </div> </div>
