Bollywood - An Insider's Point of View

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Everyone who loves movies has heard about Bollywood, the Indian movie industry located in Mumbai. Bollywood went wild with the advent of ???singies??? - their answer to Hollywood's ???talkies.??? Bollywood films are also known as Hindi movies, the two references are interchangeable.
 
1933 brought to the world the first Bollywood movie with sound, Alam Ara, a musical. Alam Ara secured Bollywood as the home to the essential Hindi movie with it's huge focus on singing and dancing at its very core.
 
In the 1940's and 50's, Hindi movies were able to widen their appeal to audiences significantly with the establishment of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). Now national film awards could be given out and the first film festival occurred in 1952.
 
In the 1960's and 1970's action movies and art movies began to take hold. Then, in the 1980's the Indian love of music struck again with the popularity of musical romances.
 
The new millennium brought multiplexes to India and with it the beginning of the experimental movies, proving that Indian cinema was ripe for some brave, new unexplored territories in film making.
 
Currently, the Indian film industry is focused much more on scripts and the use of cutting edge technologies. With these additions plus the experimentation that was taking place, Indian films were able to go international with some great successes such as the huge hit, Slum Dog Millionaire.
 
The majority of Bollywood films in present day film circles may seem exaggerated in the dramatics of the actors as well as the direction and overall appearance of the production. The foreign observer will view the emotive qualities of the actors' facial expressions and movements as perhaps overheated. The Indian nature, though, is bursting with vibrancy in their colors, festivals and general spirit. Hopefully, this character will not depart from Hindi filmmaking, while other traits become more subdued to please the global movie goer's tastes.
 
Many story lines and musical pieces of Bollywood films have always been based on the lengthy and rich history of India and on the countless number of myths that have pervaded their history.
 
Let's get into the plot and look at of one of the best known of the more modern (or most controversial) Hindi movies, The Cloud Door, that was screened for the FTII in 1995 amidst much ballyhoo. It is typically based on storytelling and myth.
 
The plot deals with an Indian king who eavesdrops on a parrot telling erotic stories to his daughter. The king is not liking this at all. He demands the parrot be executed. The princess, the king's daughter, is horrified and serves as a go-between trying to save the life of the bird by explaining to daddy that the parrot hasn't a clue what it is he is relating.
 
In gratitude, the parrot flies to the palace of the princess's boyfriend and shows him the way to the princess's chambers through a long complicated maze. The princess and her lover do what all young lovers do in the privacy of their bedchamber.
 
The Cloud Door keeps its folktale roots and has many humorous moments. The tales from which the screenwriter drew his plot are from the Sanskrit play Avimaraka of the 5th to 7th century, the Sufi epic poem Padmavat from the 13th century and the always popular eroticism of the Suksapiti.
 
It is amazing that The Cloud Door was surrounded by such controversy given the prolific erotic history of India's art and literature. Nonetheless it created a storm when it was screened at the Film Festival in 1995. The todo surrounding the film did not stop the critics from giving it a rave review.
 
Anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing one of Bollywood's films, whether an old classic or one of today's experimental productions, may see them as provincial and overblown. But stick with the Indian film industry, it will grow and change along with all creative industries, and it has a fertile soil to encourage its blossoming.

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