A censor with sensibility

[icernet-admin at listserv.cddc.vt.edu]

Kher is set for a potentially eventful three years as chairman of the
Central Board of Film Certification. He says he wants to rewrite India's
50-year-old cinema censorship law, which was inherited from the colonial
administration and last revised in 1991. That was the year economic reforms
triggered an assault on Indian sensibilities. Satellite television flooded
homes with new-wave foreign programmes. Bollywood unveiled a lustier song
and dance. Expatriate Indians made films for Indian audiences portraying a
bold sexuality. He is therefore the first cultural tsar of
post-liberalisation India. That excites and disturbs Kher, who's busy
shooting an Indian version of Pride and Prejudice for Gurinder Chadha, the
British-Asian director of Bend it Like Beckham. "Indian cinema is in
fantastic transition, which is challenging much that is central to Indian
values - and I'm involved at every level." Kher, who is chairman of the
National School of Drama in Delhi, is one of a small number of performers
who straddle Bollywood burlesque, stage, popular television, and the
emerging genre of crossover films made by, and aimed at, the metropolitan
Indians and Indian communities abroad.
Source:
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c
=StoryFT&cid=1066565924517