Footprints To Crossover

On Saturday, November 12 2005, a workshop on 'Crossover: its Different...!?' was organised by the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Comunication(SIMC) as a part of 'Footprints '05' at Rotary Sadan, Kolkata.

In his address, Shyamal Sengupta, ex-Dean, Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute dwelt on the topic 'Has crossover evolved a formula?' He was of the opinion that Bollywood movies underwent a look-change since 1993 primarily due to influx of technically proficient new breed of filmmakers and support staff with crossover movies making their presence felt since 1998, as a fallout of the liberalisation of the Indian economy that encouraged an enhanced power of consumption, questioning the sense of commitment and self-indulgence, mainly on the part of the youth. He marked out new stories, new values and low budget as the defining characteristics of crossover movies, as he hailed Kaizad Gustad's 'Bombay Boys' as a trend-setter in this genre.

Arijit Dasgupta, a noted movie distributor centred his discussion round the commercial viability of crossover movies. Pointing out that regional language movies are doing better than their Bollywood counterparts in India, he emphasized that the Hindi movie industry is currently targeting the foreign market. He was of the view that that one of reasons why crossover movies fail to take the box-office by storm is that they have very low budgets for publicity.

Noted actor, director and singer, Anjan Dutta emphatically harped on the point that a movie has to be made in the English language for it to be called a crossover. This is because it is a common language for the educated Indians, as he extolled the distinct identity of Indian English. He reserved his praises for the emerging genre of independent moviemakers who do not depend on private producers or the government for funding of their movies, which may not be technically of the highest class, but still have small pockets of the audience spread the world over that add up to a respectable whole. He was quick to add this potentially large market has to be properly tapped for increasing the commercial viability of crossover movies.

The interesting and enlightening interactive session among the students and the guests the following the discourse of each speaker dwelt on diverse topics ranging from precursors of crossover movies; commonness of life portrayed in crossover movies; restricted audience base of such movies; degeneration of such movies to formulas; approach towards sex in crossover movies; Indian conception of what the West thinks of India; to NRI audience base of Indian crossover movies; Hollywood as the greatest producer crossover movies, projection of India in such movies; 'Pather Panchali' and 'Crouching Tiger, Hiden Dragon' as crossover movies or otherwise; Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai still not being transcultural centres, as opposed to Bangalore which already is one.

In the debate on 'Are Indian films ready to crossover?', Subhojoy Roy from Asutosh College speaking against the motion, emerged triumphant, followed by Rohini Ghosh of Gokhale Colage and and Nivedita Bhattacharya of St. Xavier's College.

A hard-hitting documentary, 'Khilawdi', on the 'Banchara' tribes of Madhya Pradesh created by the students of the organising institute was also shown.

Amitabha Dasgupta, teacher of Journalism at SIMC answered to the queries of the students regarding courses offered by the Institute.