Popular Bollywood actress Preity Zinta
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The Indian entertainment industry is making a big push this year to showcase its product at the Cannes film festival next week.
"Renowned Indian filmmakers like Ronnie Screwvala, Bobby Bedi, Karan Johar, Ravi Chopra, Boney Kapoor, Sudhir Mishra, Dev Benegal, Vinta Nanda, Sunil Doshi, Manu Rewal and Suneel Darshan will rub shoulders with entertainment personalities from all over the world, including International delegates at Cannes, international stars, festival officials and members of the festival jury at a reception organised by the Film & Television Producers Guild of India at Cannes on May 19, guild sources said.
"Also present will be the 90s Bollywood diva Sridevi, Sushil Kumar Agrawal, Manish Goswami, Sunil Lulla, Dr Modi, Ashish Bhatnagar, Sunil Kheterpal, Vinod Kumar and representatives from Sahara, NFDC and Tips among others."
This is of course a strategy to expand the global impact of Bollywood.
Word is that up to 65 Indian films will be screened at the festival this year, which is scheduled from May 17 to the 29th.
Among those films scheduled to be screened are Ali Larter, the Salman Khan-starrer 'Marigold', Rakyesh Mehra's 'Rang De Basanti', Jagmohan Mundra's 'Provoked', The Last Monk by Sudipto Sen, 'Mixed Doubles' by Rajat Kapur, 'Navarasa' (Nine Emotions ) by Santosh Sivan among others.
I can't help wondering in reading about this if the Indian entertainment industry is going about this the wrong way. It seems they are attempting to compete on the same footing as Hollywood by going the big screen and theater route only. They need to look at the way this is affecting Hollywood and adjust their strategy accordingly.
While it probably doesn't hurt to present their offerings at Cannes, they could do so much more through the online marketing and interactive world.
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