A few days ago I was sitting in the room of my Azerbaijani friend Anar. Amidst other mindless catching we somehow land on the subject of Bollywood, the Indian film industry named after my home town Bombay.
"I've told you how Disco Dancer is my mother's favorite movie, right?" he said and began singing a song from the 1982 film, "Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy."
Let me put this into context. It would like travelling to Thailand to teach English, and finding your students in the small province of Chang Rai have not only heard of Across the Universe, but have their own critiques of each Beatles cover in the film.
I was floored.
Anar then explained the story behind his insider knowledge of the Indian film industry. When his mother was growing up in Azerbaijan, and indeed during much of his early life as well, the country was still part of the Soviet Union. In the USSR, as we all know, the West was the ultimate evil. In addition to no economic exchange, no culture was allowed to pass from the West to the East. So the films that were shown in movie halls all across the Soviet Union were imported from India. Bollywood movies have always been a celebration of color, melodramatic but never to be taken to seriously, and at no time in the film industries history was this truer than the 1980s. So Gorbachev placated his harrowed population with loud songs and disco dancing.
I thought of my own mother. When she was a child, growing up in Calcutta, India, Sound of Music was her favorite movie. Movies would only play on the weekend, she told me once. Her earliest childhood memories are of piling the whole family into a small, old Fiat and driving to the movie theater to see Sound of Music. She's fifty one years old now, and can still describe these trips with perfect accuracy.
Cinema, as a cornerstone of pop culture, is often considered a limited concept. Movies, only matter to those who's language they're in, or to those who live in the countries they're set it. It's so easy to assume that the films of a nation stay within only that nation. I think it's because we forget that films, like most other art forms, are just stories. And stories are always something to be shared, whether it's across coffee tables or continents.
"I've told you how Disco Dancer is my mother's favorite movie, right?" he said and began singing a song from the 1982 film, "Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy."
Let me put this into context. It would like travelling to Thailand to teach English, and finding your students in the small province of Chang Rai have not only heard of Across the Universe, but have their own critiques of each Beatles cover in the film.
I was floored.
Anar then explained the story behind his insider knowledge of the Indian film industry. When his mother was growing up in Azerbaijan, and indeed during much of his early life as well, the country was still part of the Soviet Union. In the USSR, as we all know, the West was the ultimate evil. In addition to no economic exchange, no culture was allowed to pass from the West to the East. So the films that were shown in movie halls all across the Soviet Union were imported from India. Bollywood movies have always been a celebration of color, melodramatic but never to be taken to seriously, and at no time in the film industries history was this truer than the 1980s. So Gorbachev placated his harrowed population with loud songs and disco dancing.
I thought of my own mother. When she was a child, growing up in Calcutta, India, Sound of Music was her favorite movie. Movies would only play on the weekend, she told me once. Her earliest childhood memories are of piling the whole family into a small, old Fiat and driving to the movie theater to see Sound of Music. She's fifty one years old now, and can still describe these trips with perfect accuracy.
Cinema, as a cornerstone of pop culture, is often considered a limited concept. Movies, only matter to those who's language they're in, or to those who live in the countries they're set it. It's so easy to assume that the films of a nation stay within only that nation. I think it's because we forget that films, like most other art forms, are just stories. And stories are always something to be shared, whether it's across coffee tables or continents.
