If one looks at the Indian box office even last year, one would regretfully see that among the five biggest hits, the second biggest hit after 3 Idiots is Avatar. There used to be a time when even the best of Hollywood movies did not break any records in India. You would find a lot of people around you gloating about Indian films going to 50 countries and winning awards and so on. However, the thing is that only Indians, and not the natives, are watching Indian films in those 50 countries.
In the last two decades, India has been able to export its culture through music, sport and literature, but never through films. The west has however been able to significantly influence our culture with their technologically and cinematically superior forms of cinema. Although Hindi cinema, which is currently the face of Indian cinema, has evolved over the years we still have a long way to go. Dhobi Ghat, which is Kiran Rao’s debut venture, is supposed to be a masterpiece though it is yet to be released. We need more films like that to carve a niche for ourselves.
Indian cinema has to evolve as uncluttered storytellers, which was almost taken for granted in the days of filmmakers like Satyajit Ray. We should start Indianising Indian cinema to a far greater extent than what we are doing today. We should stop Hollywood from having destructive influences on our cinema. We have so much to offer as a country, as a culture and it is time we start leveraging some of that potential.
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