Understanding India

Who does? This little publication called Indien verstehen is at least trying. It’s part of the SympathieMagazine series including more than 50 country magazines and special issues on religions, development, globalisation, human rights and more. The overall idea is to support a travel culture of encounter, respect and learning from each other. For the India issue I was asked to summarise Indian cinema in a short article. Impossible! But of course I tried my best …

[…] Indian mainstream cinema is not just a commercial, but also a social mass phenomenon. Whenever I visited my relatives in India as a little boy going for a movie with the whole family was a real highlight. Nobody owned a television, and my relatives rarely left their village. While driving into town we got already excited seeing the oversized, then still hand-painted billboards that announced the latest films with screaming visuals. Inside the crowded cinema hall we cheered enthusiastically at the screen as if the movie stars could hear us. Romantic film scenes caused silly whining, an electrical power failure caused loud whistling and when there was music people even started dancing sometimes. […]