Indian film experts and enthusiasts will share their views on how Shakespeare influenced Bollywood filmmaking in a documentary which will be screened at Birmingham Rep.
UK-based web magazine DESIblitz will also explore “how Bollywood’s depiction of Indian culture provided a rich lens for re-interpreting Shakespeare”.
The documentary “seeks to reconnect Bollywood with the diversity of the Shakespeare Memorial Library—the world’s first great people’s Shakespeare library”.
The Birmingham Shakespeare Library contains works in more than 90 languages. There are nearly 100 South Asian translations, adaptations and modernisations of Shakespeare. From Indian theatres performing Shakespeare during the colonial era to modern blockbuster hits, Shakespeare’s plays have constantly enticed Indian theatre- and film-makers to use his work to tell their stories.
The documentary will be presented in collaboration with the Everything to Everybody project, a “celebration of one of the UK’s most important cultural assets: the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library”.
Professor Ewan Fernie, project director of Everything to Everybody, said, “there is Tamil Shakespeare in Birmingham’s great Shakespeare collection dating back to the 1870s. There’s also a Punjabi Othello and material in many other South Asian languages. We’re delighted that partners such as DESIblitz are connecting with and revitalising the collection which after all belongs to all the people of the city and should therefore reflect all its people.”
The documentary, The Influence of Shakespeare on Bollywood, will be shown at Birmingham Rep on Thursday 20 October. Tickets cost £8.
DESIblitz has also curated a free exhibition, a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company and Everything to Everybody, which can be seen in the Shakespeare Memorial Room in the Library of Birmingham until Friday 28 October.