When East Meets West
When east meets west: as India and the west join forces, what can we expect from a future of collaboration?
Potentially, India means megabucks when it comes to film. With around 1,000 films released every year and an annual box-office turnover of £1.5bn, it’s already the world’s largest film industry. Despite the industry’s potential to be a huge money spinner, however, Indian films make up a small fraction of the world’s film spending and return meagre profits. It’s the promise of things to come that’s drawing western investment at a rapid rate: with a booming middle-class, increasingly interested in spending their disposable income on film-going, cinemas are popping up all over the place – 500 are predicted for the next few years alone. Kishore Lulla, chairman of Bollywood giant Eros, claims that Bollywood will be a £10bn industry within a decade – an increase which is unthinkable anywhere else in the world. Consequently, in 2006 Eros made history as it went for a listing on the LSE, and in 2007 several Indian film production companies listed on London’s alternative investment market.
Though Slumdog Millionaire is the first high-profile collaboration of recent years, there is in fact a fairly long tradition of collaboration between Britain and India – a tradition epitomised by Gandhi (1982) and which both sides are keen to continue. There is a large audience for Indian films in Britain: Hindi films comprised 16% of releases in 2005, and both the UK and the US are sizeable markets for Indian films. On October 22nd 2008, after only several weeks as Minister for Culture, Barbara Follett finalised a treaty – the main body of which was signed by Tessa Jowell in 2005, which aims to encourage co-production. The scheme provides benefits such as tax breaks (which in Britain are amongst the most generous in the world), funding and practical support for Indian film-makers wishing to collaborate with UK professionals. India, too, encourages the union – western investment provides much-needed revenue for film-makers in India, where film costs have doubled in three years, and recently the Indian government has made it easier for overseas corporations and banks to fund films.
In turn, the relatively-slow-on-the-uptake US is jumping on the bandwagon. The US has tried to break the Indian market several times in recent years, most notably with the release of Warner Brothers’ Chandi Chowk to China. Now though, with the surprise success of Slumdog Millionaire, the Hollywood big guns are finally seeing the possibility of making successful cross-over films – a feat previously considered impossible. In this month’s Sight and Sound magazine, Danny Boyle reveals that whilst filming Slumdog Millionaire, Will Smith (owner of lucrative production company Overbrook Entertainment) flew to India twice for “business meetings”. Indeed, Bollywood and Hollywood have a lot in common: the rags to riches fairytales and hair-brained money-making schemes seen in Bollywood films sit comfortably with the ‘American dream’, and both cultures are preoccupied with money and status – the star-system being a bi-product in both cases.
So what can we expect from future collaboration? The glamour, cheese and predictability typically associated with Bollywood is only one facet of Indian film-making. India has always had an art-house counterculture, but public pressure to produce films which offer respite from social hardship has resulted in Bollywood escapism becoming the formula of choice. More realistic and confrontational films have faced the problem of distribution. As expert Lalit Mohan Joshi observes: “art house cinema in the western world had the support of a distribution system as well as a regular circle of viewers no matter how small. Indian new wave cinema did not enjoy any such base”. He goes on: “today ‘New Wave’ or ‘Art’ cinema can be best described as being in the margins. Whether it will revive and co-exist alongside popular Indian cinema the way it did in the 1970s remains to be seen. Meanwhile, a discerning audience stands and waits”. If the west can provide support for such films we will undoubtedly see an increase in artistic and politically important films, such as the critically acclaimed collaboration Monsoon Wedding. Such films will be brought to mass audiences world-wide and may initiate social change. In return, India’s breathtaking aesthetics, bright colours and huge crowds provide a setting which can fulfill the western audience’s appetite for large-scale, technicolour projects. Additionally, a little escapism will surely be embraced as the west faces difficult times.
Though collaboration is mutually beneficial, it would seem that India is calling the shots. In her speech regarding the aforementioned treaty, Follett said: “any Indian filmmaker who wants to collaborate with a British producer will find it more financially worthwhile. We can also offer a mature production infrastructure and share expertise between the two countries’ film industries”. Make no mistake: Indian film is hot property, and the scheme aims to attract Indian film-makers to Britain because ultimately the future could mean money, money, money. While money-hungry western investors are, for the time being at least, important for generating revenue, the west can’t offer the same prospects to India. As Lulla nonchalantly explains: “London is just a small market for us”.
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