What Is Bollywood?

Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India.

The name is a conflation of Bombay, the old name of Mumbai, and Hollywood, the center of the United States film industry. Though some purists deplore the name (arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood), it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. [from Wikipedia.com] Time Magazine recently cited that the Indian movie industry produces over 1000 movies every year—nearly four to five times the output of Hollywood—making it the largest film industry in the world. "Every day in India, 14M people stand in line to go see movies. With this kind of exposure, the movie stars in India are almost godlike. " [Jonathan Torgovnik, Bollywood Dreams]

Bollywood Dance

Bollywood dancing is the foundation of every great Indian film. Songs typically comment on the action taking place in the movie, in several ways. Sometimes, a song is worked into the plot, so that a character has a reason to sing; other times, a song is an externalization of a character's thoughts, or presages an event that has not occurred yet in the plot of the movie. In this case, the event is almost always two characters' falling in love. "Songs are a mode of indirect expression whereby characters can articulate thoughts and desires which may be inappropriate to state directly." [Tejaswini Ganti, Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema]

In this sense, bollywood dance is a stylistic equivalent, or cousin, to westernized Musical Theatre.

Bollywood films have always used what are now called "item numbers". A physically attractive female character (the "item girl"), often completely unrelated to the main cast and plot of the film, performs a catchy song and dance number in the film. In older films, the "item number" may be performed by a courtesan dancing for a rich client or as part of a cabaret show, for example.

With film music driving the majority of the music sales in India, and song and dance playing an integral role in the daily life of Indians, movie songs have naturally become the most significant form of film publicity. Often the song sequences and soundtrack are released ahead of the movie, just to drive audiences to theatres when the movie opens. Evolving over time, from historic classical drama and folk theatre to a motion picture industry, the inclusion of music, song and dance sequences are critical, for their subtle allusion—rather than overt display—of sexuality, intimacy, or other situations which could not be explicitly picturised without penalty from film censors. In India, movie stars are also rock stars; with the music industry almost entirely driven by movie songs, touring productions of Bollywood stars draw sell-out crowds to some of the largest venues in the world. While Bollywood movie stars don’t sing, the shows feature large-scale staging of the stars’ hit songs and dances, with large ensembles of backup dancers, elaborate sets and costumes, and multi-star billing. A cross between an arena rock show and a Broadway production, Bollywood stars’ touring shows are an overwhelming spectacle of all the best in Bollywood movies.

Bollywood in the Mainstream

Recently, Bollywood influence has seeped into the mainstream American culture, especially in movies (Moulin Rouge, Ghost World, The Inside Man, The Guru, Monsoon Wedding) and music (Black Eyed Peas, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Daddy Yankee, Truth Hurts, Missy Elliot). Come see what all the excitement is about and experience the vibrant energy and passion of Bollywood!

video: Barack OBollywood (cleverly done fan YouTube video)

• Black-Eyed Peas ("Don't Phunk with My Heart")
• The Colbert Report on Bollywood
• Will Smith singing on Indian Idol
• Disney’s Cheetah Girls “One World” movie video | trailer | behind-the-scenes
• So You Think You Can Dance - Bollywood in competition, group performance and women-only
• Bollywood collides with World of Warcraft and the online gaming community, in The Guild

© 2006-2010 Bollywood West, a division of EPLATFORMA, Inc. All rights reserved.