Poster exhibition brings Bollywood to Bradford

It produces hundreds of movies a year. It has recently secured the services of Kylie Minogue, Sylvester Stallone and Denise Richards.

And still the prejudice remains that Bollywood cinema is somehow ‘a bit kitsch’ or somehow less worthy than movies made for the mainstream western big screens.

A new exhibition at Bradford’s National Media Museum sets out to challenge this notion, telling the story of Indian cinema – which celebrates its centenary this year – through iconic posters produced by the industry’s powerhouse studios.

Curated by anthropologist and Bollywood expert Irna Qureshi, Bollywood Icons: 100 Years of Indian Cinema is at the Bradford museum until June 16.

“People think Bollywood is high melodrama, song and dance and not much more than that,” says Qureshi.

“I mean, it is those things, but it’s so much more. Bollywood stars are now crossing over into Hollywood movies and the crossover is happening the other way round. Bollywood is a massive industry with a huge worldwide appeal.

“Directors like Karan Johar are making films that he says appeal to ‘global Indians’, so he films in America, in the UK, Bollywood movies that speak to people from South East Asia who are living around the world.”

Qureshi was born and lived in Keighley until she was four years old, then returned to Pakistan, where her parents were born, before coming back to England when she was nine-years-old and moving to Bradford.

“When I was younger, there was nothing on television I could relate to, apart from one programme that featured people speaking Urdu. There was nothing that I felt related to me. Then I discovered Channel Four were screening Bollywood movies late at night, so I’d stay up late and record them. It was amazing to hear and see these movies that were in my mother tongue. It was also something that I could watch with my mother and not worry that someone was going to kiss and I’d have to sit there embarrassed – unlike something like Charlie’s Angels.”

Bollywood was a passion Qureshi wanted to share. A former BBC producer, five years ago Qureshi produced and presented a series of radio programmes for local station Bradford Community Broadcasting, called Bollywood for Beginners. This was turned into an event hosted by the National Media Museum last year. She was the perfect person to curate the exhibition of posters.

“Because Bollywood operated a studio system until the 1960s, they had artists working across all their films, producing these incredible hand painted posters for all their films,” she says.

“I’ve worked with the BFI, the V&A and used the museum’s own archives to pull together the posters. The stories they tell when brought together like this is a history of the dynasties, relationships and everything that makes up Bollywood.”

Interesting stories behind Bollywood posters

The Bollywood movie posters reveal much more about the story of the industry than just what the movies are. The exhibition features a section of Amitabh Bhachan – “he’s bigger than all four Beatles put together” according to Qureshi. His posters feature him initially taking second billing to his future wife. Their second movie togther, during which they got married, he takes top billing, and finally a poster featuring the two of them and the woman Bhachan was alleged to have had an affair with.

Bollywood Icons: 100 Years of Indian Cinema, National Media Museum to June 16.