A detail from the Visit Britain map
A new Bollywood map detailing Indian cinema's most popular British locations, is being issued by the Visit Britain tourist authority ahead of the International Indian Film Academy Awards. The awards, which take place in Sheffield next week, are hugely popular and extraordinarily lucrative, having visited a Midas-touch effect on many of their previous hosts (Singapore, Amsterdam, Johannesburg).
But the map, which covers around thirty UK spots, from Tower Bridge to a Surrey football ground, may be protesting a little too much. It's one thing to try and grab a bit of the Bollywood buzz, but quite another to claim that the map will really be used by Indian visitors to the UK.
Putting aside the fact that Indian tourists might not be thrilled at the prospect of making a cinephile pilgrimage to a Slough shopping centre, or pointing open-mouthed at the bit of greenery in front of an Oxfordshire village's All Bar One, the map overestimates its place in the scheme of Indian cinema.
Foreign locations have always been as much a part of the Bollywood formula as music and dance - and usually they go hand in hand. Sometimes only the songs are filmed abroad. But the fantasy of exotic places goes right back at least to the sixties, the golden era of Indian cinema.
Raj Kapoor's Sangam (1964) set many scenes in Switzerland; the self-evident locations of the films An Evening in Paris (1967) and Love in Tokyo (1966), and even the tiny mountain village of Sikkim, then not part of India, thrilled audiences of the 1967 hit Jewel Thief. The Great Gambler (1979) shot in Cairo, Lisbon, Venice and Rome, signalled an even broader scope which has continued to this day, notably aided by the Indian government's liberalisation of foreign currency exchange.
Of the hundreds of global locations that have brought glamour and sheen to India's big screen, only those in the UK require indicating with a big pointy stick. And in one respect, it could be seen as good news: Visit Britain has at least learnt how to make a song and dance out of something.
However, for those who prefer to greet the awards with real cultural preparation rather than a gimmicky and underwhelming location map, the following films are landmarks, each well worth every last minute of the three hour shifts involved: Guru Dutt's Pyaasa; the better known and multi award-winning Mother India; Pakeezah; and Guide. Not forgetting the fine piece of cinema that is the remarkable and innovative Sholay, a spaghetti western exploring the limits of lawlessness with a Peckinpah-like feel for violence.
