India's Campaign For The Academy Awards

 

Bollywood is the largest Hindi film industry in the world, which includes Tollywood (West Bengal film), Kollywood (Tamil films), Sandalwood (Kannada films), and many other regional language films. Films are based on comedy, horror, and stories from Indian culture and history but Bollywood is famous for its masala movies full of action, dialogue, and songs.

Movie lovers appreciate Bollywood movies that have won many awards in India and foreign countries.

When talking about awards, Oscar Awards are considered the most respected and very important Awards for the entertainment field globally. Indian movies are selected for the Best International Feature Film, and films from worldwide compete for it. Indian movie makers feel proud after getting nominations for an Oscar but none of the Indian films have won an Oscar Award till now. Even National Award-winning movies are also not successful.

Rule for nomination:

From the 29th Academy Awards (1956) the Best Foreign Film Language category was started. A committee member from the film federation of India chooses a movie from the same year's release. English subtitles are necessary. Only one film is selected from each country and sent to the jury. The film must be released in a metropolitan theater that is dedicated to the Academy and must be run for seven straight days at the same theater. Good marketing is required for the promotion of the film to make sure maximum Members of the Academy come to see the movie and vote for the Award.

Ashutosh Gowariker's Lagan in 2001 (74th Academy Awards), Salam Bombay in 1989

(61st Academy Awards), and Mother India 1957 (30th Oscar award) are films that made it to the final five positions for the Oscar award till now.

 

Movies Worth Their Weight In Gold:

Movies like “Gully Boy” (92nd ceremony), “Burfi” (85th), “Devdas” (75th) and Assamese film “Village Rockstars” (2019) were good enough to be nominated for the award but these films were not better than other country's movies. The jury members do not understand Indian culture or our lifestyle.

Film Promotion:

The main reason is that film producers have no finance to advertise their films to get noticed among other entries from around the world. Filmmaker Vetri Maaran’s "Visaranai" 2017 (89th) was selected for Oscar but the film did not get shortlisted. He talks about his experience while campaigning for Visaranai in Los Angeles. He took help from a PR person, and they demanded $15,000 for promotion and selection to shortlist the film and if it gets shortlisted for nomination then pay $5,000 and additionally another $5000 if the film gets nominated. Another option is to give ads in magazines, two of those costs $32,000. Hence, if you want to get noticed then be prepared to spend money freely. 

Vetri Maaran says that Academy voters are elderly people, who want lighter topics and emotional movies. They accept violence and understand the insecurity of minorities, but they are unable to understand the harness of movies.

Guneet Monga (executive producer of Vetrimaaran’s Tamil movie Visaaranai) says “The Oscar campaign is something that you run for months, and this campaign has to be run by an American distributor and a credible publicist who specializes in Oscar campaigns.” Indian films do not have the finance to advertise their films to get noticed and compete with other entries from all over the world.

Written by: Jyoti Malik