Alan Place - Bollywood collector

 Golden Oldies

Amassing any collection of films will entail some problems. In my case - collecting old Bollywood films - the main issue is subtitles. Before the 1960's there was no need for subtitles, most films made in India were for the audience in India who could speak Hindi - the major dialect - several areas had their own cinema, but for general release the language was HIndi.

During the 60's, a new breed of Indian surfaced, children born in the UK, who were Indian, but spoke English more often, at this time, subtitles had to be readily available, yet you needed the technology to add them; this didn't happen until much later.

If you are intrigued to know, though I have a growing selection of films from the 40's and 50's, there are some actors, and actresses I don't like to watch from the era.

Why select film from this time, when Bollywood has a booming industry of modern films with subtitles?

The answer to that question is I am not a fan of modern Bollywood - in general - there are some films I like, but the tendency of basing films around the singing, and dancing of Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Aamir Khan I find boring.

Also, I find the sexist attitude in Bollywood annoying; it smacks of 1920's Hollywood. In my view, many of the actresses who get thrid billing on the films, are the equal, and in many cases better than their male leads, but they are women, and as such treated little better than cattle.