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MUMBAI:
This month, CNN’s 'The Screening Room' travels to Mumbai, the
capital of Indian cinema to examine the Bollywood phenomenon, a
$10 billion business which boasts audiences far bigger than Hollywood.
Bollywood
is famous for its ubiquitous song and dance routines and exotic
locations, swapping a Mumbai market for a Swiss mountain-top at
a moment's notice. But India's Hindi Film industry is changing -
there are more sophisticated scripts aimed at urban audiences, mushrooming
multiplex cinemas and increasing influence of the Indian diaspora
in the US, UK and Middle East.
 Bollywood
luminaries such as Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Mira Nair
speak to “The Screening Room” on the developments sweeping
the Hindi film industry, and the unique challenges faced by Indian
film-makers as they labour over a 10 billion-dollar industry which
is indispensable to a national culture which accounts for every
sixth person in the world. Additionally on the show, Amitabh Bachchan,
regarded as India's answer to Robert De Niro, discusses his career
and director, Mira Nair blends east and west, casting both Bachchan
and Johnny Depp in her forthcoming crossover venture, 'Shantaram'.
And the King of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan talks about global cinema.
 'The
Screening Room' special on Bollywood, opens not in Mumbai, but in
the English region of Yorkshire, host of this year's International
Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA), considered by many Indians as
the Indian equivalent of the Oscars. At the IIFA event, host of
the The Screening Room, Myleene Klass meets former beauty queen
Aishwarya Rai and actress, Shilpa Shetty among the established acting
elite.
The
show, also, offers global viewers a glimpse of a unique cinema-viewing
experience in two contrasting cinemas in Mumbai - the state-of-the
art Sun City cinema with its air conditioning, comfortable seats
and top quality audio; and the venerable Edward Theatre, where a
family spirit has bound some of the city's poorer workers with the
family which has owned the venue for three generations, and a series
of enormous ceiling fans battles in vain to cool the audience on
the hard wooden seats!
THE
Screening Room is CNN's new half-hour monthly movie show that offers
a compelling international perspective on the world of film, travelling
around the globe to bring viewers the inside track on all aspects
of the movie business.
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