Bollywood to enter Zulu market
2005-11-24 08:43
Bangalore - Call it Zuluwood.
In a bid to expand audiences for south Indian movies, the Tamil film Priyasakhi is being dubbed into Zulu, a language spoken by nearly nine million people in South Africa, a news report said on Thursday.
Priyasakhi, a story of love, separation and reunion between a rich girl called Priya and a middle-class boy named Sakhi, was chosen because it portrays family values similar to those found in Zulu culture, the Chennaionline website said.
The project is part of an attempt by an India-based film maker, Kumar Naidoo, to promote southern Indian films in South Africa, the report said. The department of arts and culture in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province invited the film's producers A Adhiyaman and Ramani Bharadwaj, to release the film in Zulu.
"We will be training and using (South African) musicians and artists in the dubbing of the voices and the translation of the songs into Zulu," Chennaionline quoted Naidoo as saying.
A large Indian expatriate community lives in South Africa where Tamil movies are popular, but the dubbed film is meant to attract the Zulu audience.
The movie, released in July in India, features actor Madhavan and actress Sada. Many people in India go by just one name.
Full of song and dance sequences, it tell the tale of a carefree girl who comes to realise the importance of family.
www.chennaionline.com
- AP