Bollywood dreams

Masala cinema - a popular formula blending action, romanticism, violence, music, dance and moral - has a daily audience in India of fourteen million. Jonathan Torgovnik, who has been struck by this phenomenon says, “In India cinema is just like a religion. In the same way as people go to the temple to worship the gods they go to the cinema to worship movie stars who kill scores of people with one blow and fall in love with beautiful heroines.” Torgovnik wanted to look beyond the usual Western irony of the clichés about this popular-national cinema that is both predictable and implausible, to sensitively and tactfully draw together all aspects of this phenomenon.

All images © Jonathan Torgovnik