> If only this were true!!
>
> My read on this topic is that it's not about getting "foreign" films into US
> cinemas, but getting indiginous films (if they even ever get made) onto the
> screens in their own countries. Well, that does not happen.
>
 
  Indigenous films do get made in large numbers in India, they have
audiences to see them and do make enough money. Many of them, even some
of the song-and-dances romantic ones that somebody mentioned in this
thread, are often slickly and competently produced. Still, how many are
ever shown in the US?
 
   Satyajit Ray is far more popular in Europe than in the US, and so are a
host of
other Indian filmmakers who choose to make films about their own country
rather than cater to the American's vision of an exotic land called
'India'.
 
   It is probably possible to insulate your instincts to appreciate alien
cultures sensitively if you are exposed to overdoses of a typified kind
of cinema.Probably, it does shape your visions of how cinema should be
and often that mental block tends to shut out things that donot fit into
your ideas.Ask a teenager enamoured of the Indian 'song-and-dance romactics'
how he or she feels about Ray---chances are that he or she will find it
slow and boring.Its probably better for a industry out there to make
money to make people have these mental blocks, to make them have very
definite ideas about what to expect from a film and fulfill their
expectations in innovative ways.
 
                                   Sumit.
 ===========================================================================
  SUMIT BASU
  Research Student (Ph.d.)                   'J'Block,Apartment-3,
  Department of Mechanical Engineering         Indian Institute of Science,
  Indian Institute of Science                  Bangalore- 560 012.
  Bangalore-560 012.                           Ph: 91-80-3092429
  Ph: 91-80-3092598
 ============================================================================
 
         #---------------------------------------------------#
         | I am. That's all. Had words been ever mine?       |
         | As I look beyond, from one horizon to next,       |
         | To have life, not words, suffuse my every pore,   |
         | I have wetted my sightless eyes with the night.   |
         #---------------------------------------------------#
 
----
To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L
in the message.  Problems?  Contact [log in to unmask]