Bollywood returns to Indian cinemas after its closure due to the pandemic
The only cinema in Jangpura, a neighborhood located in the south of New
Delhi, appears ready to open its doors, as if it had not been closed for
more than seven months due to restrictions to curb the coronavirus in India,
the second most affected by the pandemic with more than 7 million
cases.
The return of Bollywood cinema with the partial reopening of theaters in India starting this Thursday is heralded as good news for a country obsessed with the big screen and deprived of it by the coronavirus, although the lack of major releases may disappoint more than one spectator.
And it is that not all states have authorized the opening of theaters nor do film companies dare to release their most expensive productions due to uncertainty, at a time when Bollywood is also harassed by the media storm unleashed after death of one of its stars.
cinema without billboard
The only cinema in Jangpura, a neighborhood located in the south of New Delhi, appears ready to open its doors, as if it had not been closed for more than seven months due to restrictions to curb the coronavirus in India, the second most affected by the pandemic with more than 7 million cases.
Fifteen minutes by car to the south, one of the rooms located in the Nehru Place area tells a different story.
What until the arrival of the pandemic was an elegant cinema with several screens now has a bleak appearance: the door is barricaded with old cardboard, of the showcases that previously displayed the posters, only the plugs remain and the entrance is covered by a thick layer of dust
But what does offer a similar image are the two restaurants of a fast food chain packed with customers located just outside the two cinemas.
How many Indians eat in restaurants, go to bars or do their shopping in malls since the authorities relaxed the strict confinement imposed at the end of March?
That is the imperfect scale by which the film industry can currently judge who will go to theaters, explains Shibashish Sarkar, CEO of the Reliance Entertainment group that is part of the Indian giant Reliance.
“We need to know whether or not audiences are going to return to theaters, and we won't know for sure until there's a movie released,” Sarkar acknowledges.
Reruns planned tomorrow, like the hagiography on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are not enough.
But for the big production houses, according to Sarkar, it is the whiting that bites its tail: who dares to release a multimillion-dollar film just to test the temperature of the spectators?
Reliance Entertainment has two finished films that have not yet been released, one of them the police crime "Sooryavanshi" starring the sought-after actor Akshay Kumar.
“We announced that we would premiere it on Diwali, the great Indian festival of lights that comes next month. But now it is unlikely that we will keep that date because, in the middle of October, not all the states have opened the theaters and we cannot release a film without less than a month of promotion, ”he says.
Few films in the process of shooting
As part of the measures to revive the Indian economy, paralyzed after months of confinement, the Government allowed the shooting of films at the end of June.
But the restrictions in place, which limit the number of people in a scene and make it impossible to shoot the colorful dance numbers that Bollywood uses to set the pace of the film, make shooting difficult.
"Very few people have dared to start productions, nobody wants to take unnecessary risks," acknowledges the secretary of the Indian Association of Film Producers, Anil Nagrath.
industry under attack
The mighty Bollywood industry - which Nagrath says feeds between two and three million people - remains largely at a standstill, but the country's televisions have been opening their news for months with the ramifications of the death of star Sushant Singh Rajput.
The actor died in June, in a case of suicide according to the Police. But the event took a turn when the Rajput's family accused his girlfriend, fellow actress Rhea Chakraborty, of allegedly inducing him to take his own life.
The affair has so far cost the arrest of several people - including Chakraborty, now out on bail - and the questioning of others including superstar Deepika Padukone in an offshoot of the Rajput suicide investigation focused on drug use in Bollywood.
The media judgment has reached such virulence that 38 producers and associations from the mecca of Indian cinema have denounced two television networks, considering their coverage irresponsible and defamatory.
