India at Oscars At one hand when India is celebrating for A.R Rahmaan’s Golden Globe Award, the ouster of ‘Taare Zameen Par’ in the first round of Oscar race has distressed the Indians. Not only the Indian entertainment industry was shocked to hear the news but it has also disappointed the Indian fans. ‘Taare Zameen Par’ had been selected to represent India in the foreign language film category. It was the fourth Indian film that had been selected for the Oscar race. The first three were ‘Mother India’, ‘Salaam Bombay’ and ‘Lagaan’. It is for the fourth time that an Indian film had been selected for the Oscar race but could not succeed to win any award. Earlier famous Indian director Satyajit Ray had been awarded for his contribution for his work for the development and of Indian cinema. But some people have raised their fingers on Ray’s selection for the Oscars. According to them Oscar Committee had awarded him for his ‘special contribution’ in the field of cinema but this ‘special contribution’ has not been found in any of his films.
Questions Every year, 800 films are made in the Indian entertainment industry but at the other hand Hollywood makes around 100 films every year. But despite of this huge difference, no Indian film has succeeded in winning any of the Oscar Awards. International Film market is of 30 Billion while India’s entertainment industry’s business percentage in the International market is only 3.5 per cent. From this point of view we can make an estimate of the contribution of the western films in international film market. But there are many questions that rise in Indian minds. That are; what are those Oscar ‘measures’ according to which Indian films fail to stay in the race and win an award? At which levels Indian films fail to compete with the others? If there are any kind of short comings then Why Indians film makers don’t try honestly to remove those shortcomings to make best films?
Efforts There are many film makers who have presented true India through their picture. Some of them are Satyajit Ray, B. Santaram, Tapan Sinha and many more. They have presented various Indian classes with a great sensitivity in their films. There films can compete at the international level. Some Indian people have won Oscar Awards but no India film has succeeded to win an Oscar. But Taare Zameen Par’s ouster form the Oscar Awards’ race has satisfied the view of only those Indian film makers who say that ‘ India people like only the ‘masaaledar films that take them away’ to evade the harsh realities of the daily life. In recent times we have seen that Hollywood has made inroads into the Indian entertainment market through ‘dub’ or translated films. Today we can see many ‘Hollywood award winning films translated into various Indian languages’. This development has severely affected Bollywood’s home market. In recent years we had noted that many regional Indian films industries were at the brink of collapse. The Punjabi film industry is the exact example of it. But some people who had always remained connected with this regional industry made some ‘true’ efforts to revive the dying industry and this have got a lot in respect and support from the people to them. During these efforts many ‘world class’ Punjabi films were made and won many awards. ‘Waris Shah’ and ‘Shaheed-e-Azam Udham Singh’ are the examples of it. It is the story of a regional Industry but it also indicates that true efforts always return more than expected. Considering these facts Indian filmmakers should sensitively have a thorough thinking to improve the quality, better storyline, technique and sensitivity of the language. If it is done then there is no reason that can stop us from getting any achievement in this field.
January 17th, 2009 
Aman 
Posted in Bollywood 
