Bonjour Bollywood

02/05/2012 in Bollywood News

In France, I feel a growing fondness for things Indian. Did you know that the kurta-churidar is the latest trend in Paris? Rudraksha and bangles are popular too. Even designer Karl Lagerfeld presented an India-inspired collection. For the shows I produce, we often use Indian-sounding music and dancers as well. India is the next big country for us, fashion-wise and idea-wise,” says Dominique Cantien, a television producer from Paris.

Cantien and a team of five have dropped anchor in Delhi, to make a film on the musical, Zangoora, which is performed daily at entertainment park, Kingdom of Dreams (KoD),

in Gurgaon. Through this film, the team hopes to tell a story

of India.

In KoD, where old Bollywood movie posters flutter on a wall, a group of Rajasthani singers play the morchang and khartal and a train coach-turned-eatery sells pao bhaji, the three Parisians sit around a table, fascinated. Cantien, Laurent Goldstein, David Pierre-Bloch along with French actor Stephane Ferrara, who is touring with the group, are here to shoot an

80-minute-long documentary and a show series on Zangoora and the making of KoD for French channel NRJ 12. Cantien, Pierre-Bloch and Goldstein are producers of

this seven episode-show and the documentary.

While theatre purists have often scoffed at Zangoora’s over-the-top depictions, the musical attracts a sizeable audience at every show. Its fans describe the play as “Bollywood Live”, especially since some actors are from the film fraternity — Hussain Kuwajerwala and Gauhar Khan among them. Kuwajerwala plays Zangoora, a gypsy prince, in this fantasy set in the fictional kingdom of Shaktishila. A love triangle between Zangoora, princess Sonali and a gypsy girl Laachi spices up the storyline.

… contd.

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Tags: Karl Lagerfeld, Dominique Cantien, Kingdom of Dreams

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