A new exhibition celebrating the impact of the Asian filmindustry on the UK has opened in Harrow Museum. Bollywood in Love features classic posters and pictures from the 1950's through to the present day and shows the uncompromising style of the Indian film industry.
Bollywood movies produced mainly in Hindi and Urdu are all singing, all dancing love stories attracting a mass following among Asian communities around the globe.
Cary Sawhney, working in British Film Institute, said:"What's special about Bollywood is that its uniquely Indian; it's the mixture of songs the dances. There's the stars that people love, people go to see their favorite stars, they also go to see their favorite songs sung by their favorite playback singers, that's quite important, we all know that the songs aren't sung by the stars themselves but we know there are great singers behind those stars as well so you get the best of both worlds good acting and good singing, ideally."
Bollywood in Love charts the on-and-off-screen romances of the stars from the fifties to the present day. The film themes have remained the same, but today's Bollywood blockbusters have an international feel as they look for new audience.
While Bollywood films continue to be mainly in Indian dialects, they are enjoyed by many people who don't speak those languages in Britain. It's felt that exhibitions like this will help different UK communities better understand the Asian perspective. It will tour other parts of the UK, highlighting the growing interest in Britain for the Indian film industry.
(CCTV.com September 6, 2003)
