Fairy Tales Bollywood Style

Poster for "Cinderella - A Bollywood Ballet"

Since we're looking at Bollywood today, as little bonus for you I found an interview from 2008 with choreographer, Prashanthi Chitre, about her Bollywood version of Cinderella.

From the summary:

The musical numbers you see in Indian film, or Bollywood film, are telling a story. They do that with a mishmash of traditional Hindi, Latin American, and MTV dancing. But for many Westerners, that kind of storytelling is still tough to understand. Local choreographer Prashanthi Chitre grew up in India, and she loved Bollywood style dancing. Her lifelong dream has been to translate the joy and excitement she found in that dancing for everyone, especially non–Indians. But it wasn't until she saw her first Western ballet here in Seattle that she realized how she could do it. She tells Jeannie Yandel the story.

Indian beauty Deepika Padukone as Cinderella
(inspired by Annie Leibovitz's photo of Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella. Found HERE)

You can listen to the audio HERE - the interview starts 14 minutes into the recorded radio program. She talks a lot about why Cinderella works well for Indian audiences, interpreting the Indian joy of fantasy for Western audiences and - of course - dancing.

You can read more about the production of "Cinderella - A Bollywood Ballet" HERE.

Bollywood Turns Attention to Family Fairy Tales

I saw mention of another Bollywood film about to be released that's being marketed as a fairy tale. That's two in one week so I figured it was time to post an entry on the subject.

The first was "Ala-din", a modern day version of the classic Aladdin story with a ex-genie-ringmaster character with designs on the fabled lamp and a whole lot of Bollywood musical entertainment in between (you can find a lot of information about it in a post from SurLaLune HERE). It's being advertised as a family film despite the distribution company's name "Eros Entertainment" which might lead you to think otherwise. There's a good overview of the film HERE and here's the trailer:

Trailer for Aladin at Listal


The second is a film called "Aao Wish Karein", which, as far as I can tell is an Indian version of the "be careful what you wish for" story along the lines of "Big" (from 1988 with Tom Hanks). It's due for release sometime during November 2009. Here's one of the trailers (which has an odd mix of English and Hindi but is still understandable):


You can find more information about the film HERE in this differently angled article focusing on the music done for the movie (which is getting a lot of attention).

It would seem Bollywood is beginning to pay attention to the younger set and expanding into family films. Some would say it's overdue. Others would say it was inevitable as Bollywood follows the Hollywood model more and more. What it doesn't tell us is whether or not these films will be any good (I've seen both terrific and terrible Bollywood films). I'm curious to see how popular Bollywood "fairy tale films" will be. Whether or not we see more fairy tales (especially Indian fairy tales) tackled via the Bollywood system will likely depend on box office results. Given the fantastical sense commonly digressed into in the musicals I'm guessing the response will be favorable. I do hope so. I'd love to see some of the Indian tales a la Bollywood!