Bollywood Film {2/20}
Bollywood is the name of India's prolific film industry, deriving the name of it's cinematic capital Bombay. In 2003, the USA produced 600 films while Bollywood produced 1,100. With an estimated global audience of 3.6 billion annually, Bollywood films get seen by about a billion more people than films produced in Hollywood. Bollywood is the biggest film industry in the world.
While most Westerners are still unaware of this massive dream factory, Bollywood films are popular in many countries. Its stars are worshipped like demi-gods and the pantheon is made up of former Miss Worlds and tall dark-haired men with a whole lot of chest fur. The storylines of the films are fantastic in the most literal sense, the sky is the limit for any crazy idea. During one musical sequence (of which there are many in a single film) the location can change multiple times from sunflower fields in France to the Swiss Alps to a tropical waterfall.
Bollywoods grandseigneur is the worshipped Amitabh Bachchan, a veteran star in his sixties. His popularity is immense, in 1999 he was voted "greatest star of stage or screen" in a BBC online survey, topping out over all-time stars like Charlie Chaplin, Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando. On the female side beauties like Rani Mukherjee or former Miss World Aishwarya Rai are amongst the most popular. Most popular hero is, of course, the charismatic Shah Rukh Khan whose blockbuster 'Main Hoon Na' was Bollywood's biggest hit in 2004. National Geographic's magazine issue of February 2005 dedicated its title story to the Bollywood phenomenon, putting Shah Rukh's picture on their cover. The headline of their story was 'Shah Rukh Khan is God'.