mathur@alberta.UUCP (Ambrish Mathur) (08/21/85)
>One place the "strange practice" of showing commercials before movies >shows up is pretty much all of Europe. I just got back from the UK, and >I swear that if I ever see Telly flogging Baccardi Rum ever again, I'll >scream. This "strange practice" is extremely popular in India. India has (believe it!...or not!!) the largest movie industry in the world (yes, larger than Hollywood too). Over a thousand movies are released in a year in several languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, etc., and an occasional English one too). Since TV is only a decade old in most of India and is state controlled (making it pretty boring), movies offer the most popular form of entertainment, and therefore, THE place to advertize your product. Thirty minutes of commercials, movie trailers (definitely a hilarious art form in themselves, specially the Hindi movie ones!), an Indian News Review, family planning documentaries, etc. is very common in most theatres. Most of this fare (maybe minus the family planning documentaries) is pretty popular with the audiences and most people hate to reach late and miss all this stuff. Some of the commercials are pretty well crafted and you only get to see them at the movies. This time also allows the crowds (yes, you always have crowds at movies in India) to trickle in and be ushered to their numbered seats. Coming from this background, I myself found the absence of any such "side fare" at theatres here in Canada a little drab. -- Ambrish Mathur ...ihnp4!alberta!mathur ...Long Live Bombay's Follywood!... --