WHAT’S IN THE STARS?

When it comes to the idea of the 'nation' Bollywood is obsessed with candyfloss solutions, wrapped in melodrama: we are one happy, diverse but hierarchical family
Karen Gabriel Delhi

Two years ago, Anil Ambani's Reliance Big Pictures and Hollywood icon Steven Spielberg signed a $825 million deal to make films for global audiences. This unprecedented project was the outcome of transformations in the film industry that were initiated in 1998 by the NDA government. In a major shift in State policy, the film industry was accorded 'corporate' status. As a gradual result, the Indian film industry is now just one part of the 'Indian Entertainment Industry' being steered by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). Over the last decade, it has been undergoing steady but dramatic changes in its production, organisation and structural operations.

Corporatisation implied new and legitimate modes of film financing (the IDBI was in the vanguard) and changed taxation regimes (negotiations continue). The big new players in film production and distribution are mainly large industrial houses, corporations, and television and advertising companies. Giants like Adlabs, UTV, Studio 18, Fox Searchlight, Reliance Big Pictures, Viacom and Sony have moved into key filmmaking sectors of distribution, exhibition and recently, production. They are all globally integrated and they all aim for 'vertical integration' (of, say, TV, advertising, fashion and film). This will enable them to scale up easily, absorb risks and increase margin ranges and efficiency. The men with the money - whether underworld dons or corporate honchos - will continue to maintain control.

Understandably, then, director Shekhar Kapur and some south Indian film houses have expressed anxiety about the effects of corporatisation on filmmaking. Kapur believes that it will result in the gradual disappearance of individuality and of culture-specific models of filmmaking that were fostered by our more 'cottage-industry' type model. He may have a point.

Cinema is not just about money-making; it is an art form. Now many filmmakers have both eyes trained on an 'international' viewer. This viewer is not just the diasporic Indian, but, more ambitiously, a whiter viewer. This is a radical change since Hindi cinema has always had an international (multicoloured) audience, but films were always made mainly for local consumption. Song and dance, winding narrative gullies, comic interludes (the entire masala genre), thrived at home and abroad for that reason.

In fact, Bombay cinema is distinctive because of its unique sensibility. It is likely that the idiomatic and stylistic changes that we're already seeing (Krrish, Dhoom 1, 2, Johnny Gaddar, Manorama Six Feet Under, Dus Kahaniyan) may soon be prompted by altogether new target audiences. After all 'international versions' of films are being readied. And film titles are mostly either partly or wholly anglicised. The realist style, sponsored by the global north, is developing in the niche strand but is also morphing as it meets melodrama (Aamir, Kurbaan, New York). The stylistics of Chinese films may also enter Hindi cinema, but via Hollywood (as in Krrish).

What will happen to the powerful, influential and excellent cinemas of the south, the east or the west of India from which Hindi cinema borrows so liberally? Especially, since FICCI informs us that it is already poised to bring the entertainment industries of the varied Indian states together under a single platform. From 'Bollywood Inc.' to another manifestation of 'India Inc.'? 'Hindia Inc.'? And this, just as the multiplex offered some hope of Telugu, Tamil, Marathi or Assamese cinema in the migrant-rich metros of the Hindi heartland.