Bollywood's latest refrain -- Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, New Zealand
MICHAEL FIELD

AUCKLAND, APRIL 12: A bollywood love story is creating a lucrative industry in New Zealand and bringing hundreds of new tourists in on its celluloid dreams. While 38 Hindi movies have been made here in the last three years, October's Kaho Na Pyar Hai has left officials stunned.

New Zealand's New Delhi-based South Asia trade commissioner, Peter Healy, says his government spent around US$ 2,481 to attract the film's producers. In return came a three-hour movie which featured New Zealand and has been seen by 300 million people, as well as paying thousands of dollars in wages and hiring costs to the New Zealand film industry.

Director Rakesh Roshan, whose son Hritik Roshan played the lead with Amisha Patel, is heading back to make two more movies, as are dozens of other filmmakers, bailing out of Switzerland.

Healy called Fiji Indian Kamal Singh, who organises Hindi movies in New Zealand, ``our secret weapon''. Singh is currently on the road with another big budget movie starring Mahesh Babu and former Miss India Namrata Shirodkar.

After leaving Fiji following the 1987 coup, Singh sold farm insurance in New Zealand which took him around most of the country. ``That is when I realised how beautiful New Zealand was,'' he says. In 1993 he formed a company and advertised in the movie press in Mumbai offering to assist Bollywood companies in New Zealand. He got one reply. And when that director showed up, Kamal gave him a free tour of New Zealand. But he came back in 1995 and spent 45 days shooting the first Hindi move here.

There followed 18 months of quiet. But then another film producer came, and then another. ``We offer everything and we do everything,'' says Singh of his family operation. New Zealanders are hired for most of the technical positions, as well as dancers for the big music sequences.

The new industry has put New Zealand in direct competition with Switzerland. Switzerland is closer to India but the New Zealand dollar is attractive to foreign filmmakers. After airfares are added, costs tend to even out. The decisions on location are often made on the attraction of the new and unseen. The jewel is Queenstown in the Southern Alps. One director said of it: ``You can get Switzerland here, and much, much more.''

``Most of the directors say, in their words, it's out of this world,'' Singh says. Hindi directors often use scenery kiwi filmmakers tend to avoid. Grand mountain scenes, city squares, lots of sheep and other farm animals and, as background, ordinary New Zealanders. Rakesh Roshan told the New Zealand Herald his film's success had a lot to do with the location. ``The new location heightens the romance and makes the story believable in that people think that if they were in a beautiful place like that, they would fall in love too,'' he said. ``It's a lovely place to shoot.

The people are straightforward, fun-loving, good-humoured and helpful.We had brilliant service from many companies involved in making the movie. We don't attract the big crowds in New Zealand that we do in India and we are left to get on with the job. The scenery's great, the cost is competitive, but the people and the service are the biggest draw,'' he said.

Tourists are following behind, drawn from the 200 to 250 million-strong middle class in India. Last year, according to India's Ministry of Tourism, 3.9 million of them travelled abroad. Last year, even before Kaho Na Pyar Hai, Indian tourism to New Zealand rose by 25 per cent to 8,500 visitors.

Switzerland currently attracts 100,000 Indians a year. Almost all the Hindi movies here use Queenstown, and tourist operators, who several years ago never saw an Indian, now report busloads. Tales of Indian shoppers spending thousand of dollars at a timeabound.

Healy says the film crews are always on the look out for new locations. ``They like New Zealand for its green fields, flowers, blue water and snow,'' he said. ``Our advantage is that we can deliver all within a few hours' drive of Christchurch.''

Agence France Presse

Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.