Shooting Bollywood.(Bollywood Dreams)(Book Review)

If there is a common culture that binds India's vast multiethnic society, it is that of Bollywood. The kitschy Hindi-language films made in Mumbai since 1913 now draw 14 million Indian viewers every day. They blend melodramatic stories with cliched morals, song-and-dance numbers with over-the-top costumes, action stunts with happy endings. As is well known, India's movie industry is the world's biggest: it produces 800 feature films a year, constituting one of the country's top exports and captivating audiences all over the world.

Not surprisingly, they fascinated Jonathan Torgovnik, a young Israeli- born combat photographer who says he went to the Subcontinent after his military service because "India is the place to go if you want to be free and forget a little." Ironically, that is also why the Indian masses go to see Bollywood (as in Bombay plus Hollywood) films. Torgovnik became intrigued by the omni-presence of the cinema in India: "I'd see long lines outside theaters and huge hand-painted billboards on the street," he says. He decided to document the culture through the movies, "to go beyond the exotic, to show how life was lived." The result is "Bollywood Dreams" (120 pages. Phaidon Press), a ...