The hacked Bollywood cinema now has a happy run in Ireland and other countries

Bollywood – which is often misused as a synonym for Indian cinema – has a large number of fans. His dramas of songs and dances, filled with glamorous dolls, dressed in satin and silk, as well as brave men with bare and audacious bads, are adored.

Still, Hindi films only account for 8% of the industry's business figure outside of India, says an article in The Hindu, which is based on the findings of A German data badysis company, Tecxipio. The reason is obvious.

Much of the Bollywood cinema is hacked with impunity. And the two most important markets for such an illegal business are Tanzania and Ireland! Tecxipio says that a study of 100 high-profile Hindi films company between 2013 and 2017 has revealed that the number of illegal downloads has increased by 250% in Tanzania and 100% in Ireland.
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It can be digested the fact that a relatively poor country like Tanzania embracing piracy, but a wealthy nation like Ireland could also get into this crime seems incredulous.
The Hindu article adds: "Macedonia, Germany, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Turkey are the other European countries where Bollywood films are becoming more numerous." Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana , South Africa, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana and Morocco were among the African countries developing into hubs for Hindi film downloads, the report observed.Astonishingly, Canada has seen a decline in its numbers, while file sharers in the United States have shown increasing demand for Bollywood content, with growth of nearly 16% over the same four-year period, the most hacked Hindi movie list of 2018. The list of piracy is based on the number of file sharers who downloaded and shared the respective movies in P2P (peer to peer) networks between January 1, 2018 and June 30, 2018. ")

One of the factors the most important of piracy abroad is the unavailability. I remember talking to girls and boys in Marrakech (Morocco) about Hindi cinema. They all liked, but were appalled by the fact that there was no local theatrical distribution. Which meant that they had to go to the souk (market) to get pirated discs from Bollywood blockbusters.

One of India's most respected writers, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, once told me that he preferred to see his pirated and accessible films to the people of Chennai rather than to not being able to watch his work at all. Unfortunately, Adoor's films have almost never been released in Chennai or elsewhere in Tamil Nadu. Why Adoor, even the extraordinarily brilliant cinema of Girish Kasaravalli is not shown in Tamil Nadu. No Bengali cinema can be seen in Chennai, which boasts of a huge population of Bengal. Yet there was a time when some cinemas in Chennai were showing Bengali movies on Sunday mornings.

There are two reasons for this: linguistic chauvinism and inadequate theaters, and with a large number of Tamil films taken out of boxes every month, there is little space for other languages.

The result of all this is the unbridled increase in the number of Long John Silvers! India is without a doubt one of the best-known hubs where movies are converted into convenient discs and sold by the thousands. Often, these illicit copies take place in villages and small towns after the last show, and camcorders are used to capture ephemeral images while the spotlights are clandestinely directed.

Nobody can really tell me the actual amount lost this illegal adventure. There are hundreds of badumptions. One of them claims that piracy in Indian films alone now represents a huge market of 250 million US dollars. It's an industry that employs thousands of people.

A report by Northbridge Capital Asia argues that the Indian film industry, which produces about 2000 films in many languages ​​each year, loses 14% of its revenues to video piracy. This may be an underestimated figure because I am sure that the widespread practice of illegal Internet downloads has not been taken into account.

Unfortunately, many Indian films are not available on discs, even months after their release from theaters. enough reasons for piracy to flourish and flourish freely. And if a Tamil Nadu man can not watch a Bengali movie in a theater, he may be tempted to walk up to a Long John Silver to find a solution himself.

If this is the case in India, imagine the situation in Tanzania or Ireland. With almost no theatrical release of Bollywood images, illegal downloads or pirated discs may be the only option for someone who wants to see a Salman Khan or Abhay Deol or Priyanka Chopra or Shraddha Kapoor. Can you really blame an Indian expatriate or even a local when he opts for the illegal and the illegal?

The only way out of this is to make sure that the movies are released on records or on the internet a few weeks after they open in the movie theaters. With the multiplex system now in place even in small towns, a movie is wasted or made the first weekend. So, why not make the best use of it by selling legal records sooner than later. This will certainly limit piracy and, to a greater extent, if legitimate discs have a moderate price.

I know that there will be opposition for this. When superstar Tamil Kamal Haasan wanted to release his Viswaroopam on the Direct-to-Home platform and in cinemas simultaneously, huge protests stopped him.

But unless the movie's brotherhood comes together to fight such opposition, Long John Silvers will continue to sing "Yo-ho-ho, a bottle of rum". And happily,

(Gautaman Bhaskaran is an author, commentator and film critic who can be emailed to [email protected])