Sikh Films Vs Bollywood Films

[Guest]

If Sikhs had their own film industry, how would SIkh characters be portrayed?

[jandialvi]

Probably by Diljit and Gippy Grewal in a pagg.

Both with trimmed beards and plenty of scenes of drinking and girls in mini skirts. No change there then.

The punjabi film industry is tiny compared to bollywood and apart from Sada Haq film what other Sikh films are there really. I wouldnt even call Sada Haq a Sikh film. It was more a film based on historical events.

The most that can be expected is punjabi film makers begin to show Sikhs with more respect and not jokers and to make serious films.. without any songs would be great too.

By all means have a soundtrack to a movie but im not a fan of sering actors miming on screen and dancing round like big girls

[LegalSingh]

'Punjabi' films would (and indeed are) just be poor imitations of Bollywood films. That is because Sikhs in India generally live up to the Bollywood hype. They actually see themselves as 'entertainers' .....to 'entertain' the masses by jumping up and down like performing monkeys shouting the occassional 'chak de' and 'balle balle'. Strangely, the average Sikh in India actually thinks that position in life is actually respeced by the Indians. Because, when Sikhs 'entertain' the Indian masses, the Indians are pleased, the Sikhs there mistake the smiles and pleasure for respect. In that respect you can't blame the Indians for portraying us as slightly stupid because our actions seem to verify that.

Througout our history we have always done better when we have looked north towards central Asia rather than south towards India. We did that during our Khalsa Raj and we did that when looking for Sikh words such as sardar, dastar, ardas, khalsa, nihung etc etc. When it comes to movies we need to do that again by taking inspiration from the neo-realism of current Iranian cinema. Such films would cost less than $100,000 to make and would win international recognition.

I say lets go for the neo-realism because movies such as Sadda Haq, although good because they showed the truth, still contain the melodramatic bad acting etc that turn the international audience off. As 'Punjabis' however, we have a tendancy to be melodramatic. When we make a movie about the Sikh struggle we tend to try and fit every occurrence into the storyline to the point that the story no longer makes cinematic sense. We need to change our way of thinking and realise that with neo-realism a simple story say, for example, of a boy that has lost his school book in the fields and his struggle to find the book, can portray the mass killings of Sikhs in the background. There are better and smarter ways of telling our story.

[jandialvi]

You obviously mean a more artistic approach. That would be fantastic but i have yet to come across any such Panjabi film maker. Im a fan of Babbu Maan but his films are truelly awful. Even though his first few filmd had a messege he has a terrible way of portraying it on screen

[VanHelsingh]

You obviously mean a more artistic approach. That would be fantastic but i have yet to come across any such Panjabi film maker. Im a fan of Babbu Maan but his films are truelly awful. Even though his first few filmd had a messege he has a terrible way of portraying it on screen

An artistic approach with some actual substance, lest someone comes up with an abstract, pretentious mess which might be hugely amusing for the likes of me, but won't help to get our message out. :giggle:

I've not seen any of Babbu Mann's films but am I right in saying he made something called "Hero Hitler"? :wow: What... how... does one in this modern, connected world come up with something like that? There are no words. :stupidme:

[jandialvi]

I refused to watch that lol

[LegalSingh]

You obviously mean a more artistic approach

No, not neccessarily. When you say 'artistic' you are probably referring to 'art' films, and art films are generally the opposite of neo-realism in that they are sometimes pompous, experimental and strange rather than being true to life. By neo-realism I'm referring to the cinema of Iran today and Italian cinema after WW2. These films are characterised by their usage of real-life non-actors depicting real-life mundane situations. Easy and relatively cheap to make and repeatedly win oscars and international awards year after year......thus giving the outside world a window into the local situation.

[jandialvi]

Accha. I kind of know what you mean. A bit above me though lol