Historically, even more so in times of the emergence of streaming, live events have become direct competition with movie theaters. The premieres, in fact, want to be given the status of an event, a trend favored by the Marvel or “Star Wars” brands under the Disney seal, or by great Hollywood authors such as James Cameron or Christopher Nolan. Nobody, in their right mind, would compete against a Champions League final or a FIFA World Cup quarterfinal. But, luckily, there are always brave people.
If we extrapolate these terms to Indian sport, the direct translation would be India against Pakistan to cricket, perhaps the sport with the largest number of followers around the world after football, with one of the most lively sporting and political rivalries on the globe. And who are the brave ones? Those responsible for “Jawan”, a frenetic action film starring idol Shah Rukh Khan that not only was not afraid to release on the same weekend as the game of the year in its country, but also took home the bat, ball and race. With a collection of approximately 31 million euros in exchange, “Jawan” has just broken all possible records. And it’s still going strong, already facing its second week on the billboard.
“Jawan”, which Lighthouse distributes in Spain, has become one of the biggest global hits of the yearLIGHTHOUSE
A calculable power… and calculated
How is it possible, then, that such a successful cinema hardly has any impact in the rest of the world? Is Bollywood all that glitters in Indian cinema? How much cinema are we missing due to our Western blindness? To answer these and other questions, LA RAZÓN gets in touch with other brave people, those responsible for the distributor Lighthouse Films who, in addition to releasing “Jawan” in Spain at the same time as in India, with all the complications that this implies in In terms of logistics or subtitling, they have been bringing the best blockbusters from that country to our theaters on the big screen for five years.
«The Lighthouse project was launched seven years ago. Our first premiere was “Fan”, precisely by the same actor from “Jawan”, the famous Shah Rukh Khan. We have always been committed to introducing an innovative product to the market that was not reaching Spanish theaters. That’s when we decided to open our eyes to the Asian market and India specifically,” explains Conchita Escura, the company’s top manager, by phone. And she continues: «But it is not just our question, because from India, its producers also seek to open their eyes. Many times they are the ones who contact us first, to explore the possibilities of distribution in Spain. In the last ten years, new synergies have emerged that, accompanied by an increase in the level of production, have meant that we are on the path », she adds.
Modi and cinema: a story of love and hate
While it is true that cinema has been a key tool for Prime Minister Modi, expanding the idea of an independent India away from the colonial image, he likes some productions more than others. On September 17, all the Tollywood stars congratulated him on his birthday on social media, an unequivocal sign of support after the controversy with “The Kerala Story”: denouncing the “love jihad”, for which many Muslim men would “fake it” interest in women to convert them, the film found a powerful speaker in Modi, “for showing the ugly reality” and, incidentally, agreeing with his Islamophobic agenda.
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And this is how Escura, with first-hand knowledge of the contemporary nature of the Indian industry, shows us the way forward: the resurgence of the city of Hyderabad, in the southeast of the country, as the new nerve center of great cinema. There, 512 kilometers north of Bangalore and 595 kilometers east of Mumbai, is what is known as Tollywood, a more commercial (and nationalist) alternative to traditional cinema with more and more studios taking up residence there. Beyond fiscal and geographical incentives or urban exploitation, the reasons must be sought in the intention of its industry, more focused on entertainment than on the artistic drive. Hence, films like “Baahubali” and its sequels (also released here by Lighthouse) have been filmed there and have given rise to authentic theme parks (á-la-Parque Warner or Port Aventura) such as the immense Ramoji Film City. Home to dozens of simultaneous shoots, the park also offers weddings and relaxation tours, across its more than six square kilometers of surface.
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A new market niche
Although Tollywood has been around for almost a century, making room in Bengal for films that do not use British English as their first language, it was not until the open cultural revolution of Prime Minister Narendra Modi (who has been in office since 2014) when it has been possible to reach the magic figure of 150 films per year. This fits with his ideas of decolonization with the international conception of the country, even making it firm to change the official name of the state to Bharat, to stop being the “India” baptized by the British. Although if anyone must be recognized for the success of Tollywood, beyond an always controversial Modi who, among many other things, has drastically restricted press freedom in the country, it is its producers. Names like those of Aditya Chopra or that of the duo formed by Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad Devineni are repeated in each new “Tollywood” triumph, putting the local language Telugu first, but trying to reach international markets.
This way it is easier to understand the success of films like the bizarre “RRR”, which ended up winning the Oscar for Best Original Song last year, the current phenomenon of “Jawan” or the immersion of Western talent in the industry, with classics like stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos (“Captain America,” “Fast & Furious”) working more and more frequently in Hyderabad. The phenomenon is also explained as new thanks to the data: among the 25 highest-grossing films in the history of Tollywood, both inside and outside India, there is none that is prior to 2015. «It has always been a closer cinema to the fantastic, with great care for special effects. With the arrival of Marvel films, for example, many of these producers realized that it was time to raise the bar, both in quality and budgets. They had years of advantage incorporating special effects into their films,” adds Escura.
If there are any doubts left, they are all dispelled as Sunday night closes in Madrid. In the Cinesa de Méndez Álvaro theaters, on the edge of the M-30 ring road that limits the capital, there are several spectators who gather to look for the “Jawan” session reserved for 9:25 p.m. There is a lot of diaspora, citizens originally from India who find a blood window to its cinema, but they are not all. The mass, in the eyes of those who observe, could well be called heterogeneous: «We have never specifically gone for the Indian public, which of course comes, because at the beginning it was not so obvious. We did not start bringing this cinema because we believed that there was a specific niche to exploit, but because this cinema was not arriving as it should. It is a universal and incredible cinematographic language that many people are missing,” adds the head of Lighthouse Films, brave, and already in the front row to capture the “zeitgeist” of the new cinema with an Indian designation of origin that, with patience and many shots, aims to conquer the world.
2023-09-20 05:59:07
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