BRAZIL GOES BOLLYWOOD with FANAA

Fanaa is being taken to Brazilian cinemas to woo audiences on the 100th anniversary of Indian cinema.The Kajol-Aamir Khan starrer is the first film to open in 25 different mainstream cinema halls throughout the large Brazilian territory in hopes that the audience will become acquainted with Bollywood cinema and develop a taste for it. If the film does well in its first week, it will continue to run for a second week and possibly increase its screenings to 40 cinemas. The project of its release has been led by Dinesh Sinha and Andre Nascimento, who are at the head of Bollywood Filmes, the new and very first distributor of Indian films in Latin America. They are being supported by the Sao Paulo Center for Indian Culture, Yash Raj, Bollywood Brazil, Mistika and Social Media i9. The Brazilian trailer for the 6 year old film has been created to attract the Brazilian audience.

The decision was consciously taken to avoid the world cinema circuit for the release of the film and Bollywood Filmes director, Dinesh Sinha has expressed his company's aim to target a larger audience who is keen to watch commercial cinema. Bollywood Filmes is also setting its sights on the possibility of making the beauty and variety of Brazil an attractive location for shooting Indian films.

Fanaa has been shortened to suit the current taste of Brazilian moviegoers. Four of the songs have been left out in hopes that Brazilians will enjoy the remaining musical sequences and will ask for more in subsequent screenings of films that have been expected to release later through the same distributor.

The fever of Bollywood is therefore bound to hit Brazil and will be followed by a 2013 retrospective of Bollywood classics (organized by Ibirá Machado) shown throughout the country, which has a population of  approximately 100 million potential moviegoers. Latin America represents a vast market for Bollywood, given the films' similarity to storylines used in typically Latin American TV series called  telenovelas, which are watched daily by hundreds of millions of people throughout the continent. The huge success of one of these series, called "Caminhos da India" (The Paths of India) in 2009 has reassured investors and distributors that Brazilians are ready to fall in love with Indian films.

Here is wishing Fanaa a fantastic opening. If you are in Brazil and wish to visit the official Brazilian website for Fanaa, you may do so at http://fanaaofilme.com.br/ (Se você quer, pode visitar o site oficial do filme Fanaa aqui). You may also watch an interview about Fanaa with Aamir Khan and Kajol subtitled in Portuguese here (Vocè tambem pode ver uma intervista com os dois atores principais de Fanaa, Aamir Khan e Kajol, legendada em portugués, aqui).