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SO Ajay Devgan and Kajol have gone public. Sanjay Dutt is flying the corporate skies on White Feather. And Sunil Shetty is going in for an Initial Public Offer (IPO) for his restaurant and readymade garments’ business. Many more are following suit. Govinda has just launched his distribution company by handling the release of Hadh Kardi Aapne. Likewise, the three Khans — Aamir, Salman and Shah Rukh — are planning to go the IPO way in the coming months. Then there is producer-director Subhash Ghai mulling over the listing mantra of his production banner Mukta Arts: "Evaluations are almost complete. Within the next couple of months, we will take the plunge." "The situation is very much like the Californian gold rush that created history," said a broker with the Bombay Stock Exchange. "Every Tom, Dixit and Hari in the film industry is greedily eyeing the stock markets." |
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| The rush is not limited to the Indian
entertainment capital, Bombay alone. Although several
banners from other parts of the country are going through
the pre-evaluation procedures, south India-based
Padmalaya Studios has already filed its papers for a
tentative month-end survey. According to film industry observers, the government had provided the initial impetus by announcing several major sops to the media and entertainment sectors. These include lowering the post-issue capital requirements from the existing 25 per cent to 10 per cent. Small wonder, several
television and music industry fence sitters are taking
the cue from film folk and started dipping into the
corporate pool. They include Star TV, B4U, Sony
Entertainment Television, Creative Eye, Nimbus, Venus...
The list gets longer with every passing week. |
Art & pop merge THE advent of Internet and satellite television is prompting a large number of directors and actors from mainstream Hindi cinema to break away from formula and experiment with certain low budget films of social concern. A reverse trend has also set in as filmmakers like Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani, who were at the vanguard of the parallel cinema movement during the early eighties, are drawing upon elements of mainstream cinema and going commercial. While Benegal is making Zubeida with Karisma Kapoor, Nihalani is fresh out of a potboiler, Takshak, featuring Ajay Devgan and Pooja Bhatt. Likewise, popular stars like Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar worked in off-beatfilms, 1947 — Earth and Water respectively. "The distinction between art and commercial cinema does not exist," says Benegal. "It is a creation of the media. We are following the south-Asian cinematic form where, in any kind of narrative, songs and dances are used to tell a story." Script-writer Javed Akhtar has another explanation. He believes that with higher spending power and improved film literacy, the "distinction between masses and classes" among audiences does obliterated. "Our society is undergoing a major transformation," observes Akhtar. "Earlier, the educated middle-class constituted the audience for the parallel film industry whereas commercial cinema catered to the lumpen proletariat. Today, such segmentation is no longer valid." Indeed, with low budget experimental films like Hyderabad Blues, Satya and Bombay Boys turning out to be major box-office hits, the line between art and commerce is getting blurred. Some such films to watch out for are Split Wide Open, Danger, Tapish and Prashnchinh. (Maharaja Features) |
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