Students looking for variety in their moviegoing experience will be excited to discover that one local theater offers movies with an Eastern flair.
The Grand Cinema on George O’Neal Road has offered Bollywood movies for about a year and a half and attracts a diverse audience.
Blake Zaugg, operations manager for The Grand Cinema, said the theater is popular with those who are used to seeing Bollywood movies in their home countries.
“They are happy with the opportunity to see these movies on the big screen,” Zaugg said. “I think it’s a surprise for them to be able to see these shows that are very popular in their home country.”
Suman Gupta, creator of the Facebook.com group “Indian (Bollywood) Movie Fans” and doctoral student in computer science, said Bollywood movies are a very complete form of entertainment.
“[They] contain all the colors of life and still [touch] all the parts of family and social life of an individual,” Gupta said.
He also compared Bollywood movies to a good Indian dish.
“Indian culture is based on truth, family values, dancing, singing and good food,” Gupta said. “Bollywood movies are like making some Indian dish, putting all kinds of spices … Bollywood movies try to make the movie entertaining so that there is something for everybody.”
John McGowan-Hartmann, assistant professor of film studies at the University of New Orleans, said Bollywood films are popular with Western audiences because of their difference from American films.
“For Western audiences, Bollywood films are something to be marvelled at for their sheer spectacularity, to be viewed as an interesting curiosity, and to be laughed at for reasons the filmmakers often didn’t intend,” McGowan-Hartmann said. “Viewing them as a Westerner can give us a feeling of ‘visiting’ that culture even though we bring our own very different perspective to our spectatorship.”
McGowan-Hartmann said these films may also be popular because of the recent economic developments in India.
“The current level of popularity that Bollywood films enjoy in parts of the West may also be due to the increase in cultural interaction which naturally accompanies those economic developments that bring cultures closer together,” he said.
Zaugg said many big budget movies are coming out of Bollywood this season.
“Right now this is their summertime blockbuster time of year,” Zaugg said. “In Bollywood, they have more than triple the number of movie releases per year than we do in the United States.”
Zaugg said to get less mainstream films in the area, audiences must show more interest in them.
“Every screen needs to perform,” Zaugg said. “Whether it’s a good movie or a bad movie, [the community] needs to support the independent stuff if they want to see more independent. Hollywood will get the message.”
Bollywood’s popularity in the United States has been on the rise, and Zaugg said it could become even more prevalent.
“One of the major studios is doing an experiment to release one of these Bollywood films through a major distributor,” Zaugg said. “The market will speak. If these small, independent and foreign films can hold their own at the box office, it becomes financially viable to play more films like this.”
McGowan-Hartmann said although Bollywood films may be popular now, they will not have a lasting effect on the American film market.
“Bollywood films … are unlikely to change their very standardized narrative and structural format,” McGowan-Hartmann said. “Western audiences, however, have grown to expect regular variations and innovations with regard to film narrative and structure, and even a swelling interest in Bollywood is bound to recede once the standard formula wears thin.”
—Contact Sarah Aycock at [email protected]