At its best, the Hindi film industry, or Bollywood, is a land of endless promises; at its worst, an undemocratic space characterised by nepotism and prejudice. Undoing this elusive middle-path, the French writer and film scholar Ophelie Wiel has taken onto a recent book release, Rendezvous with Hindi Cinema, transporting the readers to Bollywood’s backstage.
In a series of 20 interviews conducted with a number of well-known names in the Indian cinema — including the music composer Sneha Khanwalkar, directors Dibakar Banerjee and Onir, film critic Mayank Shekhar, casting director Atul Mongia, writer Anjum Rajabali, actresses Kalki Koechlin and Richa Chadha — Wiel has painted a complete holistic picture of the modern-day Bollywood that seems accommodating both- the insiders and the outliers in the similar form.
Ophelie Wiel, in an interview with a media platform shared her reason of picking Hindi cinema, Bollywood as her subject, she said, “I saw Devdas by pure chance in 2003. A friend of mine, who was a big fan of musicals like me, asked me whether I would like to go watch it with her at the theatre in Lille, the city where I was studying. I knew nothing about this film or where it came from, only that there was music and dance in the movie – something I’ve always loved. And I fell in love with the whole experience, I was amazed that even as a movie-buff, I had never heard of an industry which had so many fans around the globe and made so many films! I started to watch whichever Indian movie I could find (mostly pirated DVDs, since most Indian movies didn’t get a release in France).”
Wiel further added, “I worked in Italy for the Florence Indian Film Festival, discovered even more Indian films from all parts of India, and then decided I wanted to write about it, since there was not much to find, even in France, the country where film criticism is like a religion. In 2005 I went to India for a month, did my research, fell in love with the country, and then for four years, I went back and forth until I could find a job in Mumbai, working as a teacher. That’s when my first book about Indian cinema happened. It was published in 2011. I used to say that at the end, this was all because of Shah Rukh Khan.”
Are you ready to check this book to get the insights of Bollywood?