Bollywood charms Europe

STUTTGART: Doe-eyed women in saris and sentimental love dramas topped the bill in Stuttgart as the German city hosted its third annual film festival devoted to Bollywood and its blockbusters.

The Stuttgart fair, which ended last night, is where Indian filmmakers come to conquer Europe and the United States, both slow to succumb to the sub-continent’s entertaining, chaste epics.

This year the event drew 7,500 visitors, a thousand more than in 2005, but below the 10,000 expected.

“The festival is getting bigger and bigger,” said director and film music composer Naresh Sharma. “People are really interested in Indian film.”

The audience is a mixture of devotees who avidly follow the careers of their favourite stars, like actress Aishwarya Rai, and industry players who come to look at the latest offerings from the world’s second biggest cinema industry after Hollywood.

"On the one hand you have those who know the names of all the Indian actors and on the other hand those who want to keep up to date with Bollywood,” said programme director Wiebke Reiss. The festival programme caters to both camps. In four days some 100 films were shown, ranging from the next big features and a large number of
documentaries to short horror films and a retrospective of the works of Raj Kapoor.

Women came dressed in flowing silk saris, wearing a jewel on their foreheads and thousands of filmgoers sampled the spicy Punjabi and Gujurati cuisine on offer at a bazaar set up especially for the festival.