India is a country of more than 22 official languages, and every year more than 1000 films are released in more than 12,000 cinema halls in the country. Despite of such large figures, only a handful of movies get popular with audiences,  and an even lesser number in that are films which receive critical international acclaim.

How many of our films have actually acclaimed the Academy awards?  Does this have something to do with the way we make films? Or the way we market them? The 80th Academy Awards best actor Oscar winner Daniel Day Lewis, with his dual Irish and British nationality, Tilda Swinton, winner for the best actress in a supporting role, again British, Marion Cotillard from France for best actress and Spanish actor Javier Bardem for the best actor in a supporting rote.  The films had relatively unknown names and most of them, focusing on a dark theme. The film ‘No country for Old Men’, a thriller set in West Texas about a drug deal that goes wrong and the series of consequences that emerge thereafter. The film got the awards for best direction as well as best film.

Contrast this with the films dished out in Bollywood, most of them are based on romance, the other half consist of rip-offs and remakes. The trend of remakes is like having old wine in a new bottle with the likes of ‘Devdas’. Then there are the numerous films literally photocopied from their English counterparts, like ‘Hum Tum’ (inspired from ‘When Harry Met Sally’), ‘Koi Mil Gaya’ (From ‘E.T- the Extra Terrestrial’).

If Bollywood is not making remakes these days like Sholay or other ones and not to forget the sequel trend, then it is busy dishing out cheap skin flicks, that can be made quickly what with all the ‘Beauty Contests’ models exclusively catering to the demand for actresses who are here today, gone tomorrow.

But then the quality of acting is also improved. Theatre actors are only now beginning to make a mark in acting, with more new directors and the regulars like Ramgopal Verma. With big money now being invested in films, and usage of digital technology, one would have thought that the standard of Indian films would improve and it has but only to a limited extent. Any film that raises important questions about our society or has a different theme is immediately classified as Art cinema and automatically a spin is started around the movie portraying it to be not for the masses etc.

There can be many reasons cited for lack of such films, firstly, the lack of audience, films normally are viewed by the general public as a medium of entertainment and not many people would pay up and spend 2 hours watching a film on some social depressing issue, so they prefer lots of item numbers, foreign locales and mushy films with lots of kitschy colors and typically westernized sets.

There is a positive new trend to look forward to with films like Taare Zameen Par. Good cinema should be encouraged and films like ‘Hazaaron Khwaisheyen Aisi’ by making sure that they don’t get restricted to only ‘Film Festivals’. Indian film makers have to realize that if a film has to be made hard hitting, one needs to make a strong point.