Bollywood makes a beeline for London

LONDON: Love triangles, melodrama and sizzling song and dance numbers have always been vital ingredients of a classic Bollywood film but directors are increasingly adding something else — scenes shot in London.

With St Paul’s Cathedral and Leicester Square featuring in box office hits like Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, industry insiders say the trend is partly about aesthetics and partly about culture. The scenes appeal to young Asians raised in Britain, who use film as a way of getting in touch with their roots, as well as introducing a note of glamour for audiences in India.

A London element also provides a reference point for the growing number of British filmgoers with no family links to India who watch Bollywood films in multiplexes. Some 35 Bollywood productions were shot in the Westminster area of central London last year alone. Other popular locations in the capital include Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London and even Chelsea Football Club.

Milan Luthria, director of Hat Trick, being filmed in London, said many Indians love the feeling of escapism created by British sequences. He has shot at locations including Richmond Park, St James’s Park and Waterloo Bridge. He says, “That’s the London that the Indian tourist would love to see. I would like to give them a bit of a treat, not having shown them the most attractive places before.”

Lalit Mohan Joshi, director of London’s South Asian Cinema Foundation, agreed. “Most people will see these films in India and they can never imagine coming to the UK so by watching these films, they imagine they are sitting in Trafalgar Square.”

In 1999, the total British and Ireland box office take for Indian films was around £5.7 million pounds but by 2005, this had more than doubled to £12.4 million. Adrian Wootton, chief executive of the British capital’s movie agency, Film London, said that for many Bollywood filmmakers the city is now “their biggest second home.”