The Vagrant: Where the Soviet Love of Bollywood Began
Location
King Building 325
Document Type
Presentation
Start Date
4-28-2017 4:30 PM
End Date
4-28-2017 5:50 PM
Abstract
The Indian Film Festival that took place in Moscow in 1954 has been deemed the moment when “Indian cinema conquered the Soviet Union.” Among the four featured films, Awaara (translated into Russian as Brodjaga) achieved astonishing success, garnering more viewers than any other film, foreign or domestic, over the next decade. Brodjaga would be replayed in theaters across the USSR in 1959, 1965, 1977 and 1985, and people would name their children after the film's stars Raj Kapoor and Nargis. My research, which incorporates interviews I conducted in Russia in 2016, focuses on the film that laid the foundation for a long Soviet love-affair with Indian cinema. I argue that audiences were able to relate events in Brodjaga to their own brutal history under Stalin, and thus, their response to Brodjaga amounted to an act of mass mourning.
Keywords:
Indian cinema, USSR, Stalin's terrors
Recommended Citation
Chatta, Sarah, "The Vagrant: Where the Soviet Love of Bollywood Began" (04/28/17). Senior Symposium. 11.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/seniorsymp/2017/presentations/11
Major
Russian Studies; Creative Writing
Advisor(s)
Arlene Forman, Russian & East European Studies
Sylvia Watanabe, Creative Writing
Project Mentor(s)
Arlene Forman, Russian & East European Studies
Anu Needham, English
April 2017
The Vagrant: Where the Soviet Love of Bollywood Began
King Building 325
The Indian Film Festival that took place in Moscow in 1954 has been deemed the moment when “Indian cinema conquered the Soviet Union.” Among the four featured films, Awaara (translated into Russian as Brodjaga) achieved astonishing success, garnering more viewers than any other film, foreign or domestic, over the next decade. Brodjaga would be replayed in theaters across the USSR in 1959, 1965, 1977 and 1985, and people would name their children after the film's stars Raj Kapoor and Nargis. My research, which incorporates interviews I conducted in Russia in 2016, focuses on the film that laid the foundation for a long Soviet love-affair with Indian cinema. I argue that audiences were able to relate events in Brodjaga to their own brutal history under Stalin, and thus, their response to Brodjaga amounted to an act of mass mourning.
Notes
Session III, Panel 19 - Russian | Narratives
Moderator: Arlene Forman, Chair and Associate Professor of Russian & East European Studies