The Italianization of Bollywood cinema: ad hoc films

Abstract

In this article we explore the relationship between Italy and popular Hindi cinema in which the form and narrative structure of Bollywood films undergo profound changes. Bollywood films screened in Italy are modified and absorb, through a collage of images, traces of the Italian inheritance of neo-realist cinema. We use Bergson’s theory of time to study this phenomenon, which together with the theory of collage, will form the theoretical frame of a reflection on the dismemberment that these films undergo for the Italian screens. Their transformation appear to generate ad hoc Bollywood films. The analysis of the use that the Italian entertainment industry currently makes of Bollywood texts (by adapting these texts for their national audience) is pivotal to putting into perspective, on the one hand, the global phenomenon of aesthetic and cultural changes to Bollywood cinema and, on the other hand, the specificities of the encounter of this industry with the European panorama. The analysis of this phenomenon, filtered by the Italian entertainment industry, through the use of one specific case study, the film Jodhaa Akbar/Jodhaa Akbar (Gowariker 2008, Ashutosh Gowariker Productions Pvt Ltd and UTV Motion Pictures), allows us to think about Bollywood films as re-framed by the globalization of this Indian industry.