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A TIME OF CHANGE FOR NATIONAL CINEMA

Hindi is no longer the face of Indian entertainment. Cinema and TV soaps from regions beyond Mumbai are going national.

In the age of globalization where relocation far away from one’s roots is a reality, people still want to know about their communities

When she moved to Delhi in 1988, Gana Lakshminarayanan brought along a lot more than suitcases— for her luggage included a metaphorical cabinet loaded with Malayalam movie nostalgia. Growing up in Palakkad district, she had been mesmerized by the Malayalam film industry’s strong sense of script and music. Thirty years later, she continues to flock to theatres playing Malayalam films in the national capital.

“There is nothing like the movie theatre experience,” said the 53-year-old, who most recently watched and loved director M. Mohanan’s drama about an abandoned son’s search for his mother Aravindante Athidhikal. A resident of Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, Lakshminarayanan doesn’t face any problem in finding convenient shows or theatres for Malayalam films—from Noida to Ghaziabad to anywhere in East Delhi, the options are many.

That may not have been the case even a few years ago. India’s entertainment landscape is going through some radical churn, fuelled by the multiplex revolution and increasing ease of access (online as well as offline) to content in a board spectrum of languages. As Malayalam actor Dulquer Salmaan, who made his Bollywood debut this month, recently said, everyone’s watching everything.

Meanwhile, T-Series prepares to present Baahubali lead Prabhas in an ultra-expensive spy thriller called Saaho that is being shot simultaneously in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. The preponderance of such “cross-pollination” is a clear reflection of the fact that Hindi is no longer the face of Indian entertainment. Cinema and television soaps once pejoratively described as “regional language entertainment” are not only beginning to break geographic barriers to go “national”, but also garnering enough respect as entertainment markets with concrete potential…. Click here to read the full story