Protests Force Bangladesh To Retain Bollywood Ban
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 7:01 pm
DHAKA : Bangladesh on Tuesday abandoned an attempt to lift a ban on the screening of Indian films in cinemas following furious protests by local actors and directors.
The government announced just three days ago that a four-decade-old ban on movies from Bollywood, neighbouring India’s vast entertainment industry, had been lifted in a bid to boost audiences at Bangladesh’s struggling cinemas.
But demonstrations by home-grown stars and studio heads claiming that the country’s film business would be swamped by big-budget Indian movies prompted a swift policy U-turn.
“The commerce ministry has decided to re-impose the ban on the import of films from the sub-continent, including India,” the ministry’s senior information officer Faizul Haq told AFP.
Pirated DVDs of Bollywood films are hugely popular in Bangladesh but cinemas have been banned from screening them since 1972, a year after the country’s independence, to protect the local film industry.
Actors and directors held a rally on Monday and submitted a plea to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who assured them that her government supported the nation’s movie makers, her spokesman Abul Kalam Azad told reporters.
The number of cinemas in Bangladesh has slid from 1,600 in 2000 to 600 in 2010, with the diet of low-budget local films and discreet English-language soft pornography clips failing to draw viewers.
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