Bollywood Art Woos Diaspora Down Under INDOlink News Bureau

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The hope, according to those who have mounted the exhibit – which turns the camera of celebrated New York-based Israeli photographer Jonathan Torgovnik on the Mumbai film industry, giving insights into the culture and stories behind the clapper board - is that the Indian film industry's ties with Australia will grow even stronger as a result.

The exhibition pays tribute to the stars, filmmakers, technicians and movie-goers, and explores the power of cinema in India as both entertainment and a social phenomenon. Bollywood Dreams includes 44 photographs and documentary film footage revealing the people behind the projector who present films in cinemas across India; the making and on-set action; the Indian experience of going to the movies; actors and their characters; and the touring tent cinemas.

Acting Manager of the Immigration Musuem Elena del Mercato says, “It’s a great pleasure to be hosting ‘Bollywood Dreams’. This is a great opportunity for the Museum to explore Bollywood’s fascinating culture, by revealing the world behind the camera through these stunning photographs. Jonathan’s work is a very special tribute to all the people who are involved in the making and showing of movies in India and show an unexpected face of the industry.”

She adds: “The exhibition also provides an exciting opportunity for the Museum to work with Victoria’s Indian community. With more than 42,500 people, it is now the eighth-largest group in the state. However, Bollywood has a massive appeal that goes beyond the Indian diaspora.”

Torgovnik's photographs probe behind the curtain, behind the camera, throughout the audience and into the projection room, where sweat-soaked men fight to keep an antique-looking projector in working order.

There's superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who pulls in up to $A1.3 million a film, attended by a make-up artist as a spritz of hair spray is captured by the lights behind him. In these photographs, actors appear as godly figures. Witness the Mumbai street vendor who sells posters of Bollywood idols alongside those of Mother Teresa and Jesus Christ.

In recent years it has been forward momentum for Bollywood in Australia too, as it rapidly expanded its international reach. In the exhibition hall, on a flatscreen monitor, a Bollywood dance number plays out - hero and heroine locked in a musical piece of saccharine coquetry. He sings: "Your scarf has robbed me of my peace … the dot on your forehead means the world to me." She replies in the only possible way: "You are the one I love. I dance with gay abandon."

Museum manager Padmini Sebastian said the exhibition, to run for six months, was partly an attempt by the museum to reach out to the 35,000 Indian people estimated to be living in Melbourne. "Bollywood is becoming bigger all the time," she said. "Budgets are growing and Melbourne is already a popular location for filming," she told the local media.

The international celluloid observers based in Australia are seeing "Bollywood Dreams" exhibition as another sign of Indian film industry expanding beyond South Asian borders.

A folio book including all the 44 Torgovnik photographs included in the Melbourne exhibition will be on sale during the "Bollywood Dreams" showing at the Immigration Museum.

Torgovnik has had photographs published in international magazines since beginning his career as a photographer in the Israeli Army. His award-winning works have been included in numerous exhibitions in the US and Europe and also collected by institutions including the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris.