Bollywood Dreams is, at first glance, a photographic expedition into the colourful and wonderous environment of the worlds biggest cinema. As Bollywood movies are characterized by elaborate costuming, sets and musicals, Torgovnik has managed to capture the vibrancy of such an industry with his honest portraits and expressive photography. The clear, crisp and evocative photography manages to transcend the rigid social, political and economic class system that exist within India and presents the reader with a image of Bollywood from the grass roots to the idealized actors and actress, thereby capturing the gamut of Indian society.

The book presents the reader with a unique photo essay of Torgovnik's travel within India. A former Israeli-born combat photographer, Torgovnik toured India taking pictures of his travels. Having witnessed and experienced the popularity of Bollywood films in the major cities, Torgovnik himself decided that he wanted "to go beyond the exotic, to show how life was lived."[4]. He traversed around India in an old truck with an Indian touring company, which would set up mobile cinemas thus bringing a little part of Bollywood to the remote and poor villages. The book is the result of his apparent infactuation with Bollywood cinema, and how film, as a medium, is able to encapsulate its audience in a world of make-believe while still maintaining established strict moral and ethical codes of conduct. The front jacket itself mirrors the fantastical journey in store for the Bollywood afficiado. It is a resplendent gold and silver luminant cover that subtly reflects the face of the reader, setting at once the tone of the book and offering at first glance a hint of the glamour of the Bollywood film industry. As the subjects, and the various narratives at work within the photogrphs differ so greatly, Torgovnik has taken great care in dividing the book into sections, seamlessly moving from one to the other, thereby allowing the reader a visual interpretation of the very physical journey that he once took. In terms of factuality and coherency the first and second sections of the photo essay cover the topic of the touring cinema and the actual set of the Bollywood films. The third and forth installment of photographs cover the characters within the films and the cinema itself. Collectively these photographs represent the essential Bollywood experience, the humanistic and often humble side to a glittering product, the reality behind a dream. Together they work towards presenting a cohesive physical representation of the 'Bollywood Dream', something slightly more tangible than the celluiod presentation that occupies a defined space, with a defined time limit. The book is whole, physical and as such a semi-permanent reminder of the parts that make up a whole.

Torgovnik manages to capture both the essense of his subjects as well as that of locations, the two intertwining faultlessly. Imagine your first cinematic experience as a child, the exhiliration of purchasing your own ticket to something whose images that you couldn't even begin to conjour up in your head. The aprehension of handing over your money to obtain what essentially is a ticket to the unknown, a moment that is at once contemplative as it is exciting. Torgovnik has captured that very moment eleqountley with his portrait of a young boy purchasing his first ever ticket from the Amar Touring Cinema (p. 16). In the foreground a metal grate with a hole seperates the child from the booth operator while a substantive amount of the photograph contains a box with money taken from other boys and men just like him. The boy peers in and upwards at the camera, his hand resting on the newly aquired tickets, the tiny hole represents his only means of partaking in the spectacle that is Bollywood. At first glance one could argue that the scene is carefully set up, however Torgovnik's skill lies in his ability to transform something as banal as purchasing a ticket to a reflection of a moment of perfect trepidation, a split second of human interaction that must take place before the magic of Bollywood can be accessed. It is a simple photograph like this, coupled with the fantastical entity of Bollywood cinema, that makes Torgovnik's book magical.

Bollywood, like it's predecessor Hollywood, is where dreams and epics are made. The sheer size of the Bollywood film industry clearly dwarfs that of Hollywood and any other national cinema. Indian commercial cinema is primarily Hindu and Urdu and the term 'Bollywood' originated from the fact that the majority of such films came from Bombay (now Mumbai) (p. 6). Interestingly and perhaps more fitting is the idea that the term originated from a Hindi word "...used to mean a 'spicy' mix of at least eight song-and-dance numbers and, on a cinematic level, a seemingly inexorable combination of genres, narratives and points of view" [3]. Musical numbers are an essential part of the Bollywood experience. Formulaic in intent, the song and dance sequences are often used as a way of illustrating or highlighting personal relationships and thus allow for a greater degree of insinuation and innuendo that the digesis, on it's own, refuses to do. As the storyline usually revolves around a central male and female protagonist who must endure various hardships before realising or being reunited with 'the love of their life' the film must reflect this without being overtly sexual or intimate. It obviously manages to do just that as the popularity of Bollywood films are overwhelming. It is estimated that more than eight hundred films per year are shown in India, viewed by an average of 11 million people each day[3].

The majority of the audience that attends such films are male, mostly working class men, who pack themselves into the theatre for an experience that is often so dramatically unlike their own existance it is almost projected as a fairy tale. The third section of the book 'at the cinema' visually represents this idea, with various images of packed cinemas and movie houses whose main patrons are male. Torgovnik's photograph of the matinee at the Alfred Talkies Cinema in Mumbai is packed to the brim with working class males [p.104/105], an atmosphere that looks to be quite stiffling and of course, unusually overtly masculine when compared to film audience's of the west. Perhaps the lure of Bollywood film lies in it's apparent and distinctive differences to Western Cinema, such as that of Hollywood. Bollywood films simply do it differently. Legions of dancers are a usual sight in a Bollywood film and elaborate costuming is also a given. Torgovnik managed to capture a troupe of male Indian dancers, complete with bright blue reflective vests (p.83) practicing a dance sequence for an upcoming film. Nasreen Munni Kabir's introduction to the book tells the reader that "...directors [have] mastered the use of film music and choreography. Their song sequences rival the best in world cinema and in many cases surpass the Hollywood musical..."(p.7) Kabir is a well known documentary filmmaker and author on Indian cinema however her introduction is somewhat superficial considering the vast amount of written literature currently available to the cinephile on Bollywood and Indian cinema (pp. 6-7). Torgovnik's photographs coupled with Kabir's knowledge of Bollywood could have produced a tome that made for stunning visual as well as literary consideration. While one could be argued that the introduction could be expanded a lot more, it's size (or lack thereof) fails to detract from the experience of the photographic text themselves. Perhaps in limiting worded information to simple paragraphs under the photographs themselves Torgovnik actively encourages the reader to identify visually with his subjects, thereby drawing the reader into an intimate exchange of visual narrative.

Bollywood Dreams is a evocative personal journey into the physical and mythical spaces surrounding the Bollywood film industry. It is an important visual contribution towards the study of the Bollywood spectacle, but also a tribute to those who work tirelessly behind the scenes. Torgovnik certainly appears to have an affinity with India and is able to capture the essense of one of the biggest cinemas in the world.

Endnotes:

[1] Kylie Boltin, 'Saathiya: South Asian Cinema otherwise known as 'Bollywood'' in Metro Magazine, Spring 2003 i136 p. 52

[2] Lalitha Gopalan Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema London: BFI, 2002. p. 18.

[3] Vijay Mishra, Bollywood Cinema, Temples of Desire, London: Routledge Press, 2002. p. 1

[4] Jonathan Torgovnik, Available online: http://www.torgovnik.com/

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002