Connections between Ire-land and India’s famous Bollywood film industry have been growing in recent years, despite an apparent lack of interest among the Irish public at large. But film festival founder Siraj Zaidi remains undaunted as he prepares to launch the fourth annual Indian Film Festival Ireland next month.
Connections between Ire-land and India’s famous Bollywood film industry have been growing in recent years, despite an apparent lack of interest among the Irish public at large.
But film festival founder Siraj Zaidi remains undaunted as he prepares to launch the fourth annual Indian Film Festival Ireland next month.
Started by Zaidi, director of Bollywood Ireland, in 2010 in an attempt to bring Indian cinema to mainstream audiences, the three previous four-day festivals have attracted some of India’s top actors and producers to the Irish capital – and even led to the production of Ek Tha Tiger, the first Bollywood movie ever filmed in the heart of Dublin.
But that film marks just one of the 1,000-plus films produced by the Bollywood industry every year, the majority known for their entertaining mix of melodrama and elaborate song-and-dance routines, and only a few of which make it to Irish silver screens – although the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle, which supports the festival, has put in efforts to make such films more accessible via its regular world cinema film club.
As far as the mainstream goes, however, the impact has been negligible at best. “There has been no discernible increase or indeed adequate interest in Hindi or Bollywood film here in Ireland to date,” says Dr Finola Doyle O’Neill, professor of Irish media history at University College Cork.
The same could be said of Nollywood – Nigeria’s answer to the Bollywood phenomenon, which is making its own attempts to bring Africa cinema to the fore via the Nollywood Ireland Film Festival since 2011.
More success has been found in cinema with longer traditions in the west. The Ireland Russia Business Association reports that three Russian films made the programme of this year’s Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, while the Light House Cinema in Dublin’s Smithfield district recently hosted the Japanese Film Festival, a popular event for film buffs that toured the country throughout April.
“Irish cinemagoers are more apt to prefer plot over dance and histrionics,” says Dr Doyle O’Neill as explanation for why the more vibrant styles of Bollywood or Nollywood have yet to take off here.
Yet she also notes that “from a location perspective the Bollywood film industry has contributed quite generously to the Irish economy, along with the tourism boosts as a result of filming in Trinity College and its surrounds.”
As interest grows in filming in Ireland for cultural movies, the economic outcomes could potentially benefit Ireland greatly – even if those very film projects fail to find a market here.
But as the Irish film industry makes more connections abroad, opportunities are surely growing for Irish actors in world and cultural cinema. “Who knows?” muses Dr Doyle O’Neill. “Maybe the next Bollywood film star will be an Irish man or woman who had the good sense to take those Irish dancing classes as a child!”
