Foreign Exchange

Virtual production technology eliminates the need for Bollywood filmmakers to travel abroad. But what do foreign locations really mean, socially and politically?

- Tanul Thakur 

BEFORE shooting Silsila (1981), Yash Chopra ran into a problem. No, not the controversial cast— comprising Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, and Rekha—this trouble had a poetic lilt. The second part of the song—“Dekha ek khwaab toh ek silsile hue/Door tak nighaaon mein hai gul khile hue” (As far as I can see, I can only see flowers)—tripped him. Where in this world would he find such a place? He asked Amitabh. The actor showed him a clip on his mini-projector: a garden awash in tulips. As far as Chopra could see, he could, indeed, just see flowers. He flew to the Keukenhof Gardens in Amsterdam, setting a trend synonymous with Hindi cinema: romantic songs shot in foreign locations.

Even though Chopra first travelled to the Netherlands, a country down south became his adoptive home: Switzerland. That’s where he shot his next, Faasle (1985), then Chandni (1989), then Darr (1993). (He set his 1991 drama, Lamhe, in London.) In the first two decades of his career, in fact, Chopra hadn’t left India. “Initially I used to shoot my films in Kashmir or Shimla,” he recalled in an interview, “but with the terrorism threat in Kashmir and the lack of adequate infrastructure in Shimla, I had to find an alternative.” His wife, Pam, elaborated: “You hardly needed permissions in Switzerland. But in India, if you had to shoot in a train, you had to start the paperwork six months in advance.”

So for an aesthetic-driven motive, a foreign locale meant geographical beauty—something literally unseen—a place to parachute in and out from. That’s why