Bollywood Film Festival

The film festival that I have enjoyed to most is an Indian film festival held at New Delhi in December 2005. There were great movies with different stories were released in that film festival. One of the reasons why I liked this festival is, the actors and actress of each individual movies, were excellent in their acting. The whole film festival was of 5 days showing 5 different Bollywood movies. They were very distinct from each other and they were some of the most famous movies of Bollywood. What I have learned from the film festival is that “love” is the single most important thing in life and our lives revolves around it each single day and night of our lives.

In one memorable dialogue Shahrukh Khan speaks: “It’s all about loving your parents.” This is how the first movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham started. I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from a Bollywood movie with the name such as “Sometimes it’s happiness, and sometimes it’s sorrow”. But by the strong beginning of the movie it showed the true intensity and the art of acting at its best. It was unlike the other movies I have watched before. The reason for me loving this movie was the message it conveyed in the end. I expected it to be a happy movie, but by the end of the movie I realized that it wasn’t the case. No doubt that in India it did so well on the box office.
Then on a completely different note on the second day I went to watch the movie called “Lagaan”. It covered the sensitive issue of freedom fighters of India under the British rule. It was about the war of the truth over evilness of an average Indian living in one little town of “Udaipur”. The population was under the rule of evil land lord of Udaipur in the year 1785. That British ruler thought that he can take the additional tax on each Indian citizen living in that town without justifying the situation. Besides that the character of him in the movie was not the most positive that you would like to see. So, the movie takes turn before the interval and by then those men gets their motivation from the wife of the same ruler in Udaipur. It was very new concept in Bollywood to show the pure evil and pure saint (acting as his wife) in that movie. I was surprised that in the end the normal citizen of Udaipur wins the battle and the wife of the tyrant ruler takes the center stage for her kindness, selflessness and sacrifice. The most extra-ordinary thing about this movie is that it wasn’t the pure fiction, but it really happened at one point of time in India.

The last movie of the film festival that I went to watch was the Bollywood epic called “Mughal-e-Azam”. The movie itself was released in the year 1965 but it is one of those memorable classic of Bollywood. Due to my tight schedule at the college I could attend the last day of the film festival and because of the last day there were many people in the movie theater. They were all true movie lovers like me who had come to watch this Indian classic. The movie started with the very strong performance of the legendary actor “Prithviraj Kapoor” as he shows how the father as an emperor should be like. He is kind hearted, noble, humble, good to his kingdom and a family man. But as his son tries to get control over his life by opposing the father’s created law, the movie starts to get more interesting. By the end of the movie one realizes that the son of the emperor is in true love and wants to get the girl he loves. So by the end of the movie the whole battle takes place between the two main characters of the movie. The movie shows in the end that how “true love” always wins in the end.

Finally, the Bollywood film festival ended on a very sad note. Even though the duration of the whole film festival was just 5 days, the impact it left on people’s mind was timeless. I also thought when the film festival ended about the selection of the movies and what sorts of messages they were conveying to the normal people viewing the movies. I was stunned to see the diversity of each movie. For instance, I learned that loving our parents is the single most important thing one can do. The second movie that I watched was all about how people motivate others by their willingness to help by showing their kindness. Even as a British woman, the lady shows in the end that, truth always wins no matter in what country or no matter in what situation. As the movie ended it was clear that love is also very essential to live. To fight for your loved ones is the toughest thing to do, yet you have to do it if the people you are fighting with you are judgmental about your love.