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Feast from South East
India gets ready to showcase its best, brightest and most colourful at the Indian Film Festival kicking off in Australia this week.
After the global, staggering success of Slumdog Millionaire last year, there has been a great interest in Indian cinema, including making stories about, and in, India, and international distribution of big budget Indian films.
Last year, the Indian film 3 Idiots, broke all the international records held by a Hindi film and enjoyed sold out screenings in Australia. Just last month, Fox Searchlight distributed My Name Is Khan, which debuted high on the UK, US and Australian box office charts. People have always been fascinated by the colour, extravagance and music of India, but this level of interest is quite unprecedented. And it's the perfect timing for the Indian Film Festival: Bollywood and Beyond, taking place in Australia throughout March.
The festival includes thirty films from popular and regional Indian cinema, including feature films, short films and documentaries. The highlight of this year's festivity, however, is the slew of forums and screenings being held with special guests including top Bollywood actress Rani Mukherjee (Dil Bole Hadippa, Black) who will be showcasing the ‘Rani retrospective'.
Alongside Rani will be talented directors Imtiaz Ali with Love Aaj Kal, Raju Hirani, with his bigger-than-Avatar-in-India hit 3 Idiots, and Anurag Singh, showcasing his directorial debut, the uplifting Dil Bole Hadippa! (Heart Says Hooray!).
"I'm really looking forward to talking to people who like Indian cinema and seeing what they have to say," says Imtiaz Ali. "A lot of the time perspectives differ from country to country. They like different things from different movies. It will be fun to talk to people."
Ali's Love Aaj Kal is a romantic masterpiece, welding the disparities of love between people in the old days in rural India and modern Indians living in London. This fresh and uplifting take on the traditional guy-meets-girl love story was one of the biggest box office winners last year and one of the best films screening at the festival. But if you're looking for the traditional melodrama, colour and exaggerated song-and-dance, you might be a bit disappointed.
Like most films at the festival, and a great topic for discussion, is the change in the types of stories India is producing recently. Love Aaj Kal is modern in its outlook, with crisp, fresh dialogue and more realistic storylines and dance routines.
"India has gone through a very dramatic turnaround in the last 10 years," Ali says. "The people and their points of views have changed the movies that are being made in the country."
It's a point reiterated by Hirani's social phenomenon 3 Idiots. The movie tackles the stress that college students in India face every day, and doesn't shy away from subjects including student suicide and the shortcomings of the education system, with the wider theme of empowering people to chase excellence in all facets of their life. It has an unprecedented, simple, universal theme that translates into any language.
"3 Idiots had an issue that affected every household," Hirani says. "Every household has a child who is going through this. What should they do with their life? Should they listen to their parents or should they follow their heart?
"I think it's the best time for Hindi cinema," Hirani continues. "If you look back 10 years ago, we were stuck in the formula stories. Now we look at the kinds of stories coming out and there are very different stories coming out."
That's not to say that the Indian films at the festival are completely devoid of the colour, costumes, crooning or conventions that interest international viewers. The opening film of the festival, Anurag Singh's Dil Bole Hadippa, is a visual feast about a woman cross-dressing as a man to play cricket in a small Punjab village. It's what he calls "a very colourful, boisterous, noisy film, that speaks a lot about women power," and India and Pakistan harmony. Like Love Aaj Kal and 3 Idiots, there's a fine balance in the film between telling a great story within the Bollywood conventions.
"In Bollywood, we give a mixture of everything," Singh says of the enduring elements of Indian films. "We give them romance, dance, emotion and action. All our films are larger than life.
"Today there is so much stress in everyone's life. I think Bollywood films give three hours where people just leave their houses, leave their stress and come into the cinema hall," Singh continues. "You cry, you laugh, you dance. That's what Bollywood films are all about."
Get ready to cry, laugh and dance with the Indian Film Festival kicking off in Melbourne on Wednesday March 10 with a song, dance, fashion show and a Rani Mukherjee retrospective. The festival heads to Sydney for its opening night hosted by Rani Mukherjee and Anurag Singh on Friday, March 12th.
For tickets and more information visit http://www.iff2010.com.