By C Kyalo

Box office figures clearly show that Asian film is a huge success in the US. These films have consistently been the top-grossing foreign films in the country for a very long time. Recent figures indicate that Bollywood films easily earn over $100 million a year in the United States.

The films are quite obviously very popular amongst the Asian communities in big cities across the US and also in Canada, but the truth is, their popularity actually extends well beyond these obvious core markets and the Asian community.

Why have these films become so popular and why do they continue to grow in popularity in such a crowded and competitive movie market?

Actually there are many factors that have contributed to this popularity and top of the list has to be factors like the magical charm of Asian film that makes them unique and different from films from any other place in the world. It is also true that the pressures that go with being the world’s largest producer of movies have meant that numerous films with mass appeal are being churned out at such a high rate that it is inevitable that at least some of them will strike a chord and end up being highly successful.

The continued use of quality subtitles and the increasing use of English words in movie dialogue and song, especially in recent years has, ensured that despite the films mainly being in Hindi, more and more non-Hindi speakers in North America and elsewhere are being drawn to them.

And now we are even seeing the increased use of the World Wide Web in the promotion and marketing of Hindi films. There is no doubt that the promotion of these movies has come a long way from the days when movie billboards and posters were hand-painted by actual artists because it was said to be more cost effective than printing and distributing the conventional movie posters.

But above all else the fact that these films have remained distinctly different from all other films has helped a great deal in spreading their influence and popularity internationally and in North America as well. These movies are even very different from Chinese, Japanese and even Korean offerings.

Bollywood films have a very strong reliance on music and are in fact mostly musicals. The idea has always been to give total and widely appealing entertainment, and Indian audiences have always expected full value for their money in this way. In fact, the story line, while being important, has always been a mere vehicle in which to carry love triangles, comedy, dare-devil stunts and thrills, suspense and tragic drama all mixed together in one huge pot of a movie that will usually run for about three long hours.

Obviously this is a very unique style and approach that is somewhat difficult to copy successfully anywhere else in the world. It is distinctly Indian and has developed over many decades where filmmakers have learnt that the only way to survive in the business is to go with this style and seek mass appeal.

Where else on the planet can you get this kind of celluloid recipe?