This may be the most obscure film I've ever reviewed. It presently has no Wikipedia entry and only seven votes on IMDb. But since I usually like documentaries about the industry, I gave it higher priority than other entries in the local Jewish film festival that had my dad interested. (The few docs directed by Danny Ben-Moshe that don't have a Jewish focus are even more obscure.)
As you probably knew, Jews make up such a small percentage of the Indian population that most lists of religions in India lump them under "other." But in the second most populous nation, that still allows several thousand -- more than enough to leave a significant impact on Bollywood. In particular, they've had the advantage of a relatively permissive faith with regard to depictions on screen. Here's a hint: The poster shows dancing cartoon women.
I was not aware that Hinduism could be as reserved as Islam when it came to letting women on stage or on camera. Even prostitutes from those backgrounds rarely dared. Many silents included men in drag, and the brief clips shown herein look laughably unconvincing. Enter Ruby Myers, better known as "Sulochana," who became super popular. In later decades came the successes of Rose "Miss Rose" Ezra, Esther "Pramila" Abraham, and Farhat "Nadira" Ezekiel. (Figures that Jews kept getting stage names.) It's not clear to me how much they were appreciated for acting ability rather than sheer beauty and willingness to take racy roles, but I could say the same of most Hollywood stars to this day.
Lest you think that women accounted for all the Jewish presence in Bollywood, the documentary also spends a little time on writer Joseph David Penkar and actor David "Uncle David" Abraham Cheulkar. Much in contrast to the above ladies, the latter man was no conventional hottie; as his moniker implies, he played avuncular older characters.
In some cases, their success was not limited to the box office. Pramila became Miss India -- the very first, in fact. Uncle David represented India at the Olympics as a promoter. Even Mahatma Gandhi found occasion to mention a starlet in a speech, tho exactly which one is escaping my memory.
The doc runs a mere 76 minutes at a fast pace. Sometimes it adds minor animation to spice up old photos or to introduce chronological "chapters." Sometimes we're even shown parts of a storyboard or comic conveying past interactions that wouldn't have been on camera. Not exactly great stuff, but I prefer it to the animation of Searching for Sugar Man or Jodorowsky's Dune.
The one element that I'm sure I haven't seen elsewhere is the inclusion of a religious symbol after the name of each interviewee on screen, mostly descendants of old-time celebs. I counted one Muslim, one Hindu, and a bunch of Jews.
To my slight surprise, I hadn't heard of any of the movie titles mentioned, even for the present era. Nor do I or my dad particularly want to see what was excerpted; they looked hackneyed. I might take a chance on Wildcat of Bombay, in which Sulochana plays eight parts, mostly male, but when would I ever get that chance?
Further research tells me that Jews made up a larger percentage of India before 1948, when most felt safer emigrating to Israel (one year after Indian independence, incidentally). My dad and I hadn't known that Jews had lived in India for millennia, particularly after the Second Temple destruction. Their current population there is actually a little higher than we expected.
If you take a general interest in history, Judaism, India, or cinema, there should be something for you in SB. I for one did not get bored with it.
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