In a bit of a wild week of idea-swapping, I decided to do the first in a series of short “parable” films I’ve been thinking about here at BCM. It’s a project I planned on starting back in the US, but the idea came up to give the stories a bit of an international voice, and perhaps do them in different places in the world. Bangladesh is, of course, a great place to start! Since my boss has always wanted to do this type of film for a national audience, he was on board right away. I wrote a 4-minute script, and before I knew it, we were planning to shoot it within the week. Since we’re already shooting a documentary project on the days before and after the new mini-shoot date (the new shoot is on our “day off”), our equipment is already set, so the next step was casting. Which brings me to my title.
The film industry in Dhaka is very small – a micro-bit of the Indian film industry, which it closely resembles. Most stories involve tons of Bengali singing, dancing, and romancing, with plenty of obligatory danger and action, overplayed in an almost cartoonish tone by a small revolving door of frequently-appearing players employed in the “studio system,” essentially. But don’t be taken in by this description, even if you enjoy more than your fair share of Hindi cheese, because Bengali cinema definitely has a less sophisticated style with much lower production values. Most projects, shot on video with minimal art direction and a visual sensibility somewhere between kung fu and “Miami Vice,” are aimed at Bangladeshi television rather than cinema. In spite of having little to no appeal to an international audience, the locals eat these movies up, and so the local industry continues to churn them out in a voracious, Bollywood-style fashion; only, in this case, it’s called “Dhallywood.” (more…)
I am now one week into my second visit to one of the most unglamorous and remote parts of the world: Bangladesh. While it may seem that, surrounded by the up-and-comers on the world’s financial scene, like India and China one one side, and southeast Asian tourist hubs like Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal and Vietnam on the other side, Bangladesh must be one of the “small, but steaming ahead” sites of world development that you just don’t hear much about. Perhaps factories are thriving and Bollywood culture is beating out the heart of this soon-to-be prosperous people. Or perhaps it’s one of those hidden gems: the final frontier for “off the beaten track” tourism.
