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India Has a Film Industry?
| Article
# : |
10834 |
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Section : |
The Arts
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1986 |
2,138 Words |
| Author
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Sanjiv Prakash
Sanjiv Prakash is a print and television journalist based in
the Washington, D.C. area. |
India's film industry is the largest in the world. On an average, Bombay, which is India's Hollywood, turns out 400 full-length motion pictures in a year. Bombay, nestled in the extreme western corner of the country on the edge of the Arabian Sea, is the urban trendsetter of this nation of 750 million people.
To give a real-life example of how much films influence Indian life, one has only to look at the screen to note what the latest fashion is. If a casual approach is in with the motion pictures, then so will India's 200-million-plus regular moviegoers strive to be casual, in the way they dress or in the way they may carry themselves. In the mid-1970s, when Bruce Lee-style kung fu was the martial art of the day, thousands of Indians started enrolling in kung fu training schools run by amateurs, with many unfortunate endings far removed from the slickness being pushed by films inspired by martial arts from Heart of the Dragon.
The Bombay film industry is totally film-based. In other words, it caters primarily to movie theaters and not to television, whose day in the professional programming sense is yet to arrive. Films that are produced in Bombay run in over 10,000 large and small movie theaters in the country. Theaters in India are much different from those in the United States. The average Indian movie theater accomodates two thousand to three thousand persons at any sitting and invariably they run at full house all the time. Movies in India are, in the truest sense of the word, an escape for the masses from the harsh realities of a difficult life. As in any other society, motion pictures enable the viewer to vicariously enjoy the life of his or her dreams. But in India this has more meaning, as motion pictures display the
... (1995 of 12531 Characters)
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