By Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

From Jaunpur to Surinam and Mumbai to Patna, from Mumbai to Gorakhpur Bhojpuri films have started making waves once again and have emerged as another variant of Bollywood. Such is the outreach of this language that it has given a new lease of life to even the stars, directors, producers et. all, who were forced to hang their boots owing to the transformation that Bollywood has been experiencing progressively during the last four-five years.

The ultimate benchmark of revival of this industry is reflected in the fact that Amitabh Bachchan donned the grease paint to face the camera for this genre of films, even though his make-up man might have produced the film. Or for that matter Dilip Kumar, who has again stepped into the limelight along with Saira Banu via the conduit of Bhojpuri films to resuscitate his association with Bollywood.

Were one to analyse the reason for new lease of life to this industry a factor that would emerge as the stark motif is the exponential spread out of the Bhojpuri speaking people all across the country and in positions of eminence, as a result of which the films are being released on the pan-India basis and it turns out to be handsome commercial proposition for the producers, directors and the distributors. Mumbai the city that breathes eats and sleeps on movies has experienced the biggest affect of this transformation explicit in the fact that the Bhojpuri speaking population now forms more than 22% of the population of Mumbai.

Bhojpuri speaking population is constituted of the belt that includes Bihar, UP, Bengal, MP, etc, which forms more than 60% of the population of the country and is a migrant population for whom the source of entertainment is only a movie. The profile of the movies that attained an urbanesque connotation was not able to provide an umbilical link with the motherland and as such there was disillusionment.

This gap has now started filling up and it has provided new lease of life to the cinema halls in the hinterland that were not able to exhibit the films of the yore owing to the high value distribution costs associated with it. Bhojpuri as a language has been brought into the national mainstream of media and has come back again to Bollywood owing to the yeomen contribution of Laloo Prasad Yadav, the honorable Minister of Railways who removed the stigma of ‘under developed’ associated with it, and pitch forked it into the national mainstream once again.

In the structure of marketing as this genre is still evolving it lies at the bottom and as it is addressing the people who are majorly at the bottom of the societal level, the products in the form of movie that are offered to them are least expensive in terms of its costing. Since the costing is low revenues in flow is rather fast, and this facilitates in faster assembly line production. Quality is not the criteria presently in these movies, but quantity, as it is trying to fill the gap of providing entertainment on a regular basis of a variety that provides a connect to the roots and the places of origin.

From Raj Kapoor to Amitabh Bachchan, all of the stars have played one of their immortal roles playing characters that were dyed in Bhojpuri nuances. The ‘Gadiwan’ character of TEESRI KASAM played by Raj Kapoor, or the dacoit played by Dilip Kumar in GANGA JAMUNA, or Sunil Dutt's various characters, the Birju of ADALAT played by Amitabh Bachchan, or for that matter the Ganga of GANGA KI SAUGANDH all these characters had a Bhojpuri orientation. It is altogether a different matter that majority of the actors did not hail from the belt, but understood the fact that acceptability from this area would attain a profound connotation if a character was played that conveyed the spirit of the belt.

Or for that matter the all time great hits of Rajshri Films, HUM AAPKE HAIN KAUN which was an urbanized version of NADIYA KE PAAR, and whose profitability is still to be surpassed by any other movie of Rajshri.

As the character of the movies changed, and it became yuppie oriented Bhojpuri started going out of vogue. With the element of failure in the zone of more than 75% for the movies that are made by Bollywood, reemergence of Bhojpuri Movies could provide a new lease of life to the industry as a whole.