'Big Bollywood business network at Cannes, no quality cinema 
By Deepa Gahlot, May 21, 2007 - 10:36 IST
It's been years since an Indian film made it to the competition section at the Cannes Films Festival (last was in 1994 with Shaji's Swaham), but the Indian film industry has started to
see business sense in attending the festival in the South of France in great numbers, because under all that red carpet glamour and yacht parties, Cannes is a huge film bazaar.
For the fifth consecutive year, the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting took a big delegation to the festival and this year there's an excuse for
a little more hoopla than usual. This is the 60th anniversary of the Cannes festival and also the 60th year of India's Independence, so seven films are being showcased in the Tous les
Cinémas du Monde section. Inaugurated by the Festival in 2005, this section, according to the Cannes website, "showcases the vitality and diversity of cinema across the world. It
focuses on both the creative talent and the institutions that promote cinéma d'auteur within a particular country. Each day, one country is invited to present a range of features and shorts in
celebration of its unique culture, identity and recent film works."
So India gets its share of the spotlight, along with Poland, Lebanon, Africa and Columbia. The films selected are Saira, Missed Call, Lage Raho MunnaBhai, Veyil, Dosar, Guru and
Dharm. Indian filmmakers and stars get to walk the red carpet and there will be the usual round of parties.
However, the action is all outside the theatres as over dozens of film companies from India will display their projects at the venue and at the India Pavilion. Companies like UTV, Adlabs,
iDream, Studio 18, Kaleidoscope, Moser Baer and Shemaroo have taken up stalls at the market to promote their new films and hopefully sign deals. Amitabh Bachchan is the star of the
delegation along Shilpa Shetty, Preity Zinta and top producers and directors.
Only Irrfan Khan gets to 'officially' walk the red carpet with Angelina Jolie, for the world premiere of A Mighty Heart, the film based on the book by Mariane Pearl, about her husband
journalist Daniel Pearl, slain by fundamentalists. Satyajit Ray Film Institute student Raka Dutta's graduating film Chinese Whispers will compete in the festival's Cinefondation section
for short films.
Aishwarya Rai who made a splash at Cannes once as a jury member and once accompanying Devdas that was screened outside of the Competition, attended with husband Abhishek
Bachchan. Nandita Das was on the jury too, and last year Mallika Sherawat walked the red carpet with Jackie Chan and The Myth. Recent Indian films that have won kudos in
Cannes—but not in competition—were Manish Jha's short A Very Very Silent Film, Murali Nair's Arimpara (he had won an award at Cannes for his first film Marana
Simhasanam, the same Camera d'or which Mira Nair won for Salaam Bombay), Vinod Ganatra's Heda Hoda and Gitanjali Rao's animation film Printed Rainbow.
Otherwise, there's just a flashback to the time when Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar won the Grand Prix in 1946, and then a decade later, Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, bagged
the Best Human Document Award.
A selector for international film festivals was reported to have commented that Indian art films, that are usually on the festival circuit are thirty years out of date in terms of content and
technique and the big Bollywood films are derivative of Hollywood and don't appeal to a foreign audience. After a lot of hullabaloo over 'crossover' cinema—that started with international
success of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon—Bollywood still hasn't been able to produce a film that appeals to the non NRI- audience. That fact also is that there is such a huge
Diaspora audience for Hindi films, that producers don't really care if they get white audiences—not in terms of money, of course the prestige of winning an Oscar or having a film in the
official selections of major festivals is a different thing altogether.
So the big guns of Brand Bollywood can make a song and dance at Cannes, and feel happy at the network they have created of the business they have done, but they still can't get in the
door when talk comes down to quality cinema.
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