Bollywood: Only song and dance?

When I went to speak to Asad Shan, the founder of Iconic Bollywood Productions in London, I knew only a little about his background. The fact that he hosted a Bollywood show on a music channel in India before coming to London and setting up his own acting school gave me the feeling that he was one of the many struggling actors who could not manage to crack the industry and hence came back to impart the wisdom gained whilst trying to make it. But after speaking to him, I realised that he really knew the workings of the industry.

And that is how we got talking about the way the industry is today. He kept saying that the usual song-and-dance fare is what the people want, and the only thing that makes money, so the filmmakers don't want to experiment with anything else. But I think that is changing. Very slowly, yes, but definitely changing. How else do you explain the commercial success of Dev D, a modern-day spin on Devdas, a classic. The movie is all about sex, drugs and alcohol, a look into today's urban India and I think it did very well for itself. The approach to the film was very dark and the topic itself was enough for drawing much criticism. But it's success, mostly among urban audiences, proved everyone wrong. However, a glaring sign of how the industry itself recieved the film is seen in the way it was dealt with in almost all the award functions.

While Filmfare (which is like the Indian Oscars) gave it one nomination in the best film category and one in best music, and in spite of winning in the best music category, the lack of enthusiasm and the usual fanfare related to every other film nominated was clear. And so we saw that even in 2010, the hindi film industry does not look positively upon newer, fresher cinema. But at the risk of sounding foolishly optimistic, I feel that just having such a film nominated is a baby step forward in the new age Bollywood era.