FACE THE NATION | CNN-IBN SPECIAL
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QOTD: B'wood bankrupt of ideas?
Published on Wed, Dec 27, 2006 at 10:33, Updated on Wed, Dec 27, 2006 at 14:08 in Entertainment section
Tags: Face The Nation, Bollywood , New Delhi
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New Delhi: This year has been a stellar year for Bollywood. Be it the chart-topping movies, big brand names or the mega moolah, the Hindi film industry romanced them all.
But the one thing that stood out was the ability of our filmmakers to adapt or get inspired or simply put, copy, a movie or parts of it to dish out a new product.
While there were several movies like Don and Dhoom 2, which were sequels, there were others like Malamaal Weekly and Tathastu, which were straight rip-offs.
Is there a dearth of originality within our film industry?
To answer that big question on CNN-IBN’s Face the Nation was a panel which included filmmaker Subhash Ghai; ad guru Alyque Padamsee; writer and director of Four Step Plan, Chaitanya Tamhane and Managing Director of Kaleidoscope Entertainment, Bobby Bedi.
We have always known it exists, we've talked about it and condoned it, but Bollywood’s affinity to plagiarise doesn’t seem to die down. And the rip-off artists of Bollywood often use euphemisms like ‘adaptation’, ‘inspiration’ or ‘research’ for copying.
Filmmaker Subhash Ghai explains that no art form is original. “All art forms are created by what already exists in the universe. It is with their vision and imagination that human beings recreate it. The difference lies in the fact if we are aping it consciously or unconsciously,” Ghai says.
Ad guru Alyque Padamsee agrees that there is a limit to creativity and points out that Shakespeare had once said that there are only 36 plots that exist within the creative field.
“Each one of Shakespeare‘s famous plays - Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juilet or Merchant of Venice - was ripped off from other novels and books. But the genius comes in when you take the material and turn it into something new,” Padamsee explains.
On a light note, Padamsee says that the meaning of the word copyright in the Indian context was the “right to copy”.
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