International
New York shows the way as a location shoot destination
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HONG KONG: Shah Rukh Khan at Filmart 2005? Believe it or not, the Indian superstar and his blockbuster Kal Ho Na Ho was used to promote the Big Apple as a location shoot destination for film and television producers from Asia. |
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Thursday’s session ‘Promoting Film Industry in Respective Markets’ saw an American sales pitch at its aggressive and compelling best. |
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Though the session had speakers from Australia, the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong as well, it was the two-woman powerhouse team representing the state of New York that dominated the discussion.  Of course, it’s important to note that the presentation had compelling content underpinning the slick packaging. The governor’s office of New York state and the mayor’s office of New York city are directly involved in film shoot activities and the rewards are there for all to see in that The Big Apple generates $ 5 billion a year from the entertainment industry. The most admirable aspect to the story is how all the different municipal and state authorities work in close coordination and cooperation with one unified aim in mind making it easy to get the job done. For those of us used to the situation at home where the left hand of the same authority (let alone others) does not know what the right is doing, makes it all the more remarkable. Some of the incentives provided to attract production work to New York include: sales tax exemption, fully refundable film production tax credits (equal to up to 15 per cent of production costs) free media time, and free use of public utility manpower (like police) as well as locations (that includes even premium ones like the Empire State Building, Times Square and the Manhattan Bridge). The facility of free media time is especially innovative and unique. New York government provides free media time that tallies up to one per cent of the production costs across multiple platforms like bus shelters, radio and television. Of particular note are the free space provided on Jumbotron screens in front of the Reuters and Nasdaq buildings. To use a baseball analogy (more so since the Big Apple is home to the New York Yankees), all bases covered. |
LOS ANGELES: Acting has never been an easy profession, but in recent years, it has acquired a new existential anxiety. Artificial intelligence can now mimic faces, clone voices and, in theory at least, speak any language it is fed. The fear that actors may soon be replaced by algorithms no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction. And yet, despite the rise of digital inauthenticity, some performers remain stubbornly resistant to replacement. The reason is not celebrity, nor even talent. It is language.
On paper, this should not be a problem. AI can translate. It can imitate accents. It can string together grammatically correct sentences in dozens of languages. But acting, inconveniently, is not about grammatical correctness. It is about meaning, and meaning is where AI still falters.
Machine translation offers a cautionary tale. Google Translate, now powered by neural AI, has improved markedly since its debut in 2006. It can manage menus, emails and airport signage with impressive efficiency. What it struggles with, however, are the moments that matter most: idioms, metaphors, irony, and cultural shorthand. Ask it to translate a joke, a threat disguised as politeness, or a line heavy with emotional subtext, and it begins to unravel. Acting lives precisely in those gaps.
This matters because film language is rarely literal. Scripts, particularly in independent cinema, rely on figurative speech and symbolism to convey what characters cannot say outright. Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a useful example. The film’s recurring use of red operates on multiple levels: grief, desire, repression, liberation, and memory. These meanings are inseparable from the Spanish cultural context and emotional cadence. A translation may convey the words, but not the weight they carry. An AI-generated performance might replicate the sound, but not the sense.
This is where multilingual actors gain their edge. Performers such as Penélope Cruz and SofÃa Vergara do not simply switch between languages; they move between cultural logics. Their fluency allows them to inhabit characters without flattening them for international consumption. Language, for them, is not an accessory but a structuring force.
Beyond European cinema, this becomes even more pronounced. Languages such as Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin are spoken by hundreds of millions of people and underpin vast cinematic traditions. As global audiences grow more interconnected, the demand for authenticity increases rather than diminishes. Viewers can tell when a performance has been filtered through approximation. Subtle errors, misplaced emphasis, and an unnatural rhythm break the illusion.
There is also a practical dimension. Multilingualism expands opportunity. SofÃa Vergara has spoken openly about how learning English enabled her to work beyond Colombia and access Hollywood roles. But this movement is not a one-way export of talent into English-speaking cinema. Multilingual actors carry stories, styles and sensibilities back with them, enriching multiple industries at once.
Cinema has always thrived on such hybridity. Denzel Washington’s performances, for instance, draw on the cultural realities of growing up African American in the United States, while also reflecting stylistic influences from classic Hollywood and Westerns. His work demonstrates how identity and influence intersect on screen. Multilingual actors extend this intersection further, embodying multiple cultural frameworks simultaneously.
At times, linguistic authenticity is not merely artistic but ethical. Films that confront historical trauma, such as Schindler’s List, rely on language to anchor their moral seriousness. When Jewish actors perform in German, the choice is not incidental. Language becomes a site of memory and confrontation. It is difficult to imagine an automated voice carrying that responsibility without hollowing it out.
This is why claims that AI heralds the death of language miss the point. Language is not just a delivery system for information. It is a repository of history, humour, power and pain. Fluency is not only about knowing what to say, but when to hesitate, when to understate, and when to let silence do the work. These are not technical problems waiting to be solved; they are human instincts shaped by lived experience.
AI may one day improve its grasp of metaphor and nuance. It may even learn to sound convincing. But acting is not about sounding convincing; it is about being convincing. Until algorithms can acquire memory, cultural inheritance and emotional intuition, multilingual actors will remain irreplaceable. AI may learn to speak. But it cannot yet learn to mean.
In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, language remains stubbornly resistant to automation. And for actors who can move between worlds, linguistic, cultural, and emotional, that resistance is not a weakness, but a quiet, enduring advantage.
