Beyond Bollywood

While for many the idea of Indian cinema conjures up the colorful costumes and dance numbers of Bollywood, an Indian film festival launched Friday in Beijing hopes to reveal the diversity of Indian cinema by selecting multi-language films, produced in several different regions of India.

"Indian films have long been popular in China. I've been reminded time and again by some of our Chinese friends of our more successful films here, such as Avara and Caravan," says S. Jaishankar, the Indian ambassador to China. "The visible attraction of Bollywood songs and dances, as well as our previous soap operas, indicate that there is a market waiting to be tapped."

"What people don't realize is that the films come from all over, from Bengali in the east to Maharashtra in the west, as well as some South Indian movies," Jaishankar says. "We want to give Chinese audiences a representative idea of Indian movies and not just Bollywood films."