Bollywood

by Ashok Banker

Check it out. Bollywood, as the Bombay-based Hindi film industry isaffectionately nicknamed, is the new cool in international cinema. Theworld’s most prolific film industry has always been regarded with dubiousinterest by Western critics, film professionals and movie-goers. Whatelse can you expect from a genre that requires every film to have a younggood-looking romantic lead couple, half a dozen or more lengthy songslip-synched by actors to playback singers, costume changes every fiveminutes and an utter disregard for most film narrative conventions? Inspite of these quirky peculiarities—or hell, maybe because of them—ithas come out of the kitsch closet and taken its place alongside the mostrespected ethnic films on the planet.Partly it’s a numbers game. India has the fastest population growth ratein the world, the second largest population (over 1.1 billion at the lastcount) and one of the highest percentages of youth between the ages of 12and 24. As any Hollywood mogul will tell you