When the Transnational Didn't Travel in Bollywood. The Case of the film Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (dir. Shaad Ali, 2007)

04.11.2011 15:15 - 16:45

Rajinder Dudrah | Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of Manchester

The 2007 release 'Jhoom Barabar Jhoom/Dance Baby Dance' had an A-list Bollywood star cast including Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Preity Zinta, amongst others. The film with its pulsating soundtrack score, promising a song and dance extravaganza and produced by an A-list production team, under the Yash Raj Films banner was tipped to be an international success. Yet, the film's box office return was mixed across different Bollywood territories and it received a number of varied trade press and audience reviews. Why was this so? Did this have something to do with the film being set predominantly in London where it played around with Bollywood film form and aesthetics of the romantic comedy and song and dance genres, that appealed to only some audiences and not others? This paper will attempt to make sense of the mixed transnational success of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom in the context of a contemporary globalised Bollywood cinema that travels in unintended and unpredictable ways.

Organiser:
Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde
Location:
Seminarraum 1