Aniruddha Bahal October 22, 2004

Tags: iraq , movies , reconstruction , business

href="/tag/music">music directors R. D. Burman and Jai Kishan for more than 25 years now.

In a war torn country where the Mahdi army stomps and fights and where Jordanian born militant Abu Musa Zarqarwi stalks the land with his band of militants beheading foreigners you can see Shah Rukh Khan hoardings endorsing Kenstar products at busy Baghdad intersections.

The coming of the Americans has in fact lead to Hindi films doing a roaring business from Basra to Baghdad to the Kurdish areas of Erbil, in northern Iraq. Says Adil Hamid Kalaf, 47, "25 to 30 per cent of all films sold in Iraq are Hindi films. With the Americans coming in, salaries of the government officials has increased. And with so many development projects going on the people have more money than before to spend."

Kalaf should know. His own shop Wasan, off Baghdad’s Old Rasheed Street, has been at the centre of it all since he opened it in 1979.
Selling only Hindi films his shop is full of posters of Kareena Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit. That’s not counting the abundance of Amitabh Bachchan, who is an undisputable legend even in Iraqi consciousness.

Kalaf sells between 2,500 to 3,000 Hindi films on CDs every month from his small shop, next to an Iraqi cinema theatre. Before the imbroglio at Falluja, west of Baghdad, on a single day he claims to have sold nearly 130 films. At an average of 2,000 Iraqi dinars per film (the new films are costlier than the old ones), Kalaf’s turnover is in the region of US $ 4,000 per month. Says Kalaf, "The new films sometimes sell for as much as 10,000 Iraqi dinar. Films like Kanhaiya I am selling for 5,000 Iraqi dinars and the bulk of the films at 1,500 Iraqi Dinars" In Iraq, 1,500 dinars is equivalent to a single US dollar.

Kalaf himself is one of Iraq’s principal distributor’s of Hindi films—by ways of piracy, of course. Near his shop is Art Melodies, run by Hasan Hadi, a shop selling printed CD covers since five years. From the sale of Hadi’s CD covers an indirect assumption can be made of the number of Hindi films sold in Iraq. Says Hadi, "I sell about 100,000 cover pictures a month for Hindi films. 25 per cent of the covers I sell are for Hindi films." And Hadi is just one of the principal suppliers of pictures. His shop sells a 1,000 CD-covers for US $ 10.

The switch of the Iraqi film viewer from VHS cassettes to CD-rom happened sometime in 1997 and lead to Hadi spotting the business opportunity with a partner. Says he, "I decided to get into the business of printing covers as there was a big demand and no one was doing it. I manage to get film posters from Wasan and sometimes download them from the internet."

According to Hadi, his own picture business proliferated after a profusion of Hindi film duplicators emerged all over Iraq. His own clientele is not limited to Baghdad alone but comes from places as far away as Erbil and Basra, in Iraq. Adds Hadi, "Earlier there were just 20 odd shops duplicating CDs but now they are in hundreds. People are even duplicating from their homes. But they all come to buy pictures from me for their CDs."

While films from Kalaf’s shops are not subtitled in Arabic at all, those selling in Erbil, 5 hours north of Baghdad by road, are mostly with Arabic subtitles even though the local language of the Kurds is not Arabic. Says Salman Ahmed, who has been running a shop in Erbil for five years, "I sell about 500 films a month. While all old Hindi movies like Mother India are subtitled in Arabic, only about 40 per cent of the new ones are subtitled. The Hindi movies sell here because they make people cry but everything is solved in the end and it’s a happy ending. But people like the tragedy in between. They also like them for the songs."

The top films in terms of numbers sold in Salman Ahmed’s shop are Deewar, Jani Dushman and Chalte Chalte. Says he, "As a rule the old men and women want to buy the old movies while the new ones are bought by the youth." A sticky problem while duplicating the movies is that they usually copy in three CDs instead of two, increasing the price by about half a dollar.

Says Salman Ahmed’s 1988 born son Mohammed Uhdi, who mans his father’s shop on a regular basis, "People buy Hindi movies for their love story and songs. But for action people here buy Van Damme."

Ahmed’s shop itself is one of about a dozen shops selling Hindi film CDs in Erbil. The biggest is Erbello, owned by Didar Sherzad, 25, who for the last six years has been selling Hindi films. He gets original cassettes from Baghdad or Syria, all of them subtitled in Arabic, besides copying them from satellite channels and moves about 3,000 of them a month from his shop. Says Sherzad, "Earlier the people would come and buy only one movie for they didn’t have the money. But now, they are making money and buy 2-3 CDs."

While Ahmed and Sherzad sell Arabic and English films besides the Hindi ones, there’s one shop in Erbil, owned by Dara Hamad Amim, 32, who sells just Hindi films like Kalaf in Baghdad and he is also a huge fan of Preity Zinta. Says Amim, "I have this shop for two years. I liked Hindi films too much and decided to open a shop two years back. I sell about 70 movies a day and make a good living out of it. The price of CDs has also fallen making the movies cheaper and at the same time the wages of people have arisen. During Saddam’s times the price of CDs was 7000 iraqi dinars. Now we sell a 2 CD Hindi movie for 1,500 dinars. In my own estimate 80 per cent of the movies sold in the Kurdish areas are Hindi movies. The Hindi language is a cocktail of Pharsi, Arabic and Kurdish so people understand some words."

The other factor booming sales in Erbil is the repatriation of money to their homes from Kurdish expatriates. Says Ahmed, "People send money to their homes here and apart from movies and music there are no avenues for entertainment here. Also, when Kurds come back home from Europe or elsewhere they go on a movie buying spree because CDs are so costly in Europe. So they buy 40-50 films at one go."

The Hindi movie fan base itself is a wide spectrum. Though the younger lot buy movies more, there’s a slight gender bias towards females. Says Zena Zamel, 24, a teacher in Baghdad, "I watch 3,4 Hindi movies a month. Amitabh Bachchan is my all time favourite. So what if he’sold. Naseeb is my all time favourite film. The youngsters like the Hindi films because there’s a lot of song and dance in them. As they grow older they appreciate the storyline."

For youngsters like Zena watching Hindi films in groups in Baghdad is a favourite pass time. Says Rana Rashid, 18, a student in one of Zena’s group, "We like Hindi movies because they show values which are very Arabic. Respect for elders, no kissing on the screen and big families. Besides they are so romantic and you feel like crying all the time."

At the other end of the spectrum you have grown up males like Asso Mahmood, 29, a Kurdish fighter in one of Kurdistan’s two biggest armies. Mahmood buys all his films from Amim’s shop and has seen more than a 100 Hindi films. Says Mahmood, "I have been seeing them as a kid. Everyone in my village watches them. I have 50-60 movies in my house itself. My small brother also watches them. Though I understand only a little I will understand more if there are Arabic subtitles." Mahmood is a big fan of Mithun Chakravarty and Disco Dancer (please check name) is his all time favourite film.

For the shops in Baghdad though everything wasn’t smooth going in Saddam’s time. Says Kalaf, the pioneer, "In 1985 Saddam had my shop closed for more than a month because I had a Amitabh Bachchan poster in my shop and not his. I removed all the posters and signed a letter saying I will have no more posters and pictures in my shop before they allowed me to reopen it. Saddam also banned the movie Coolie and Guide here. And also Deewar. Because of their political message."

There was another incident as well. On a Friday in 1982, after prayers, more than a 1,000 Indians visited Kalaf’s shop at its earlier location leading to a lot of attention from Saddam’s intelligence officials. Those were days when many Indians still worked in Iraq even during the war with Iran. Says Kalaf, "Saddam’s people came to me and asked why so many Indians were visiting my shop. They kept me under surveillance for five years. The Indians were only coming to buy films. They also bothered me when a Pakistani diplomat visited me to buy Hindi films in 1986."

Of course the retailers of the Hindi films have been smart enough to neutralize the Islamists by selling tapes of their religious discourses. For Hadi it’s been a question of keeping their photographs in stock. Says Hadi, "They don’t bother us for we sell big posters of them. Besides I print covers for tapes of their Koranic lectures."

A big problem for the piracy industry, however, is lack of enough movies to keep the consumers in tune and well oiled. Kalaf himself made a trip to Mumbai four months back and carted back 500 movies and a 1,000 posters. He had an excess baggage of 80 kg. The posters finished in 4 days. In his hurry he forgot to buy Hindi music cassettes. But Kalaf is an old India hand and has visited the country many times in the early 80s. He has personal pictures with Dev Anand from the sets of Lootmar, with Rajesh Khanna from the sets of Ghar and with Amitabh Bachchan from the sets of Kalia and Shakti. (please check names)

But while Hindi film CDs are making a roaring business in Iraq once again after the fall of Saddam and the infusion of money in the economy, another conflict area a few hundred kilometers west of Iraq, in the Israeli occupied Palestine areas, is seeing a decline in the sale of Hindi films for reasons of an economy that’s in reverse gear from the intifadah.

In Ramallah, about 20 kilometers from Jerusalem and the interim capital of the Palestinian National Authority, many video shops have closed down since the second intifidah began in September, 2000 against the Israeli occupation. Says Nabil Jabri, 30, owner of Nabil Video, a Video shop in Ramallah, "At least 10 shops have closed down since the intifidah. People have no money anymore to buy films even though they want to."

Jabri’s fourteen-year-old shop, is doing one third the business that it used to earlier with respect to all films sold. While previously he used to sell nearly 150 films a month and rent out about a 1,200 films per month at about three shekels (4.5 shekels make one US dollar) a film now he rents out about 500 films a month at a marginal rental increase of 5 shekels a film. Says Jabri, "Fewer people even rent out films now. And I get to sell only about 50 films a month. People have to worry about food on the table now. Films are a distant priority."

So bad is the situation that the presidents of neighbouring Palestinian universities have approached the Indian representative in Ramallah, Ohm Prakash, to have a special festival of Hindi films which are so hugely popular. Says Prakash, "We are organizing a festival in September, this year, in various universities where we will screen Hindi films. Different films will be shown on different campuses over 3-4 days. Avenues of entertainment have become sparse here."

That’s an understatement. Says Abraham Davidson, 76, who ran a business of distributing Hindi films in the region for nearly three decades, "Between 1960 and 1991, Hindi films played in at least 40 theatres in West Bank and Gaza. Now they are all closed. The video and the intifadah destroyed them. I remember that Sholay was as big a hit in Tel Aviv in 1976 as it was in Gaza. I remember that I bought the distribution rights for Sholay for about US $ 15,000 but went onto do business worth nearly US $200,000 on it. And this was 1976.
The collection from Gaza was equal to or a little more than the collection from Tel Aviv."

In Israel itself while the popularity of Hindi films has always been there with the Mizrakhi (oriental jews), now even the Ashknasi (European jews) are taking to them largely because of cable television airing nearly three movies a week.

Says Davidson, now an advisor on Hindi films with a cable channel due for launching in October, "If we subtitle a film in Hebrew we sell 1,000 DVDs in a week. Even the Askknasi like the music of Hindi films. The problem in showing them in theatres is that now all the theatres In Israel are basically controlled by two groups while earlier they used to all be individually owned. And they don’t allow screening on Saturdays, the Jewish holiday of the week. They also give us slots late in the night. So it has become very difficult to put Hindi films in theatre halls. But once the Arab market opens up again it will be bigger than before. This much I can predict."