Shalom Bollywood Podcast

The documentary "Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema" explores the contributions of Jewish women in Bollywood during the 1920s to 1960s. It highlights the stories of Camila, Miss Rose, and Solota, who were trailblazers in the industry. The film is directed by Danny Ben-Moses, who aims to give these actresses the recognition they deserve. The documentary delves into their lives and accomplishments, but falls short in explaining their Jewish heritage and the challenges they faced. It also lacks context on Indian cinema before Jewish influence. Despite these shortcomings, the film has a moving narrative and an engaging structure. Overall, it sheds light on an often overlooked aspect of Bollywood history. If I asked you to name some of Bollywood's earliest superstars, you'd probably think of big names like Raj Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, or Nargis. But what if I told you that some of the earliest female icons who literally made the foundation for Bollywood were Jewish? First of all, you'd probably call me crazy, but Camila, Miss Rose, and Salota, the biggest, earliest Bollywood superstars, were actually all Jewish. These women were trailblazers, and their stories were captured well by Danny Ben-Moses' documentary Shalom Bollywood, The Untold Story of Indian Cinema. Hi, my name is Faisal Chaudry, and today I'm going to be delving into this interesting topic and extending more on Danny Ben-Moses' five pieces. The director of the documentary is Danny Ben-Moses, an Australian filmmaker known for exploring the Jewish identity and stories across the world. He's super inspired by the diaspora which led him to create this film. So a little bit more about Shalom Bollywood is that it's a really amazing documentary that sheds light on lesser-known parts of Indian history that have to do with multiculturalism and religious outlaw. The documentary highlights a time from the 1920s to the 1960s where India really discouraged Hindu and Muslim women from appearing on screen. So Jewish women often stepped into these roles and filled this industry gap in the market. So the documentary mainly follows three eras, the silent, golden, and concluding era, all which show the beautiful story of Pramila, Miss Rose, Solochana, David Abrams, and Nadira. These are all wonderful actors that made profound waves in the Bollywood industry. The goal of the documentary is simple, it's to give the showbizers the recognition they deserve. By highlighting their stories, Shalom Bollywood not only celebrates their contributions, but also challenges the audience to see Bollywood's history in a new light. It's about honoring the legacy of the Jewish artists who actually begged to defy social norms, bringing their talent to the passionate screen. And luckily for you guys, today I'm going to be evaluating how well Ben Bosch actually gets this done. And first, I'm going to start off by actually breaking down the content. The first era we're covering is the silent era, the start of the madness where Jewish women broke down boundaries and made their mark on Indian cinema. Let's talk about three incredible pioneers from this time. First of all, we have Ruby Meyers, the early 1920s silent era queen, known as Solochana or Beautiful Eyes. People once said that she looked like she was shaped by the hand of Brahma, which is a funny contrast to where she's actually from, ethnically. She was a birth superstar girl. She played a variety of roles which included boys and girls. India was absolutely obsessed with her. When Mahatma Gandhi needed help with his independence films, he put her dances in his film. She had India's first Rolls Royce, and India even put on a stamp for her. People were wondering about Solochana's background ethnically. She was Jewish. But one thing the film does not do is actually explain her ethnic background and her upbringing, which is a major fault in the plot of the documentary as she's actually kind of the main character of this whole story. Look, the film makes up for this by talking about Miss Rose, by going into her ethnic background. Miss Rose was a Sephardic Jew from Calcutta from a conservative Jewish community. She used to be a single mom and used Bollywood as an opportunity to make money and make it out of poverty. She basically owned 1930s cinema. She was awesome. Which one is Esther Abrams, otherwise known as Camilla, which is actually Rose's cousin, so she's also a Sephardic Jew. And the surprising thing about this is that she actually made my mom's favorite movie, Anarkali. I had no idea about this, and it was super weird bringing it up to my family, but they actually did not know she was Jewish either. So the reason she was given the name Camilla was to cover up that she was actually Jewish, as people did not really look for that while they were looking into media. And she was awesome. I'm telling you, she made the first Indian movie that was screened at the Buckingham Palace. Each of these women broke the industry in a certain way. First of all, Solochana was the first woman to ever be featured in an Indian Bollywood film. First of all, they used to use men in replacement as women in order to keep it in cohesion with social norms. Then after the presence of Jewish women was established by Solochana, we had Camilla come in, and she got in some hot water. She was actually in a movie called The Van, where there was the most kids had ever recorded in a Bollywood movie at that time. So they took this out of sight and made it a really big deal. People were arrested on the scene, and it was actually banned nationally for a while. For me, Bollywood was the best way to get in touch with my cultural heritage. And as embarrassing as it is, some of my first crushes were actually from Bollywood. So seeing how these Jewish actors actually paved the way for women to be involved in such an awesome industry is super awesome to see, especially since it's not really highlighted. So to me, this is the most interesting part of the film, where it's just to go with the Jews in India, which ties into what we learned in class. So you look at the Beni Israel Jews that landed up on the Carnton Coast, and kind of give them the basic gist of how Indians 2000 years ago left Rome and Israel and kept on the refuge on the spice route. They were stuck in India because their ships actually broke down and a temporary stop turned into a livelihood and oasis in the outskirts of Bombay. And in India, Bombay is basically their Hollywood. So it was basically ideal location for them to join the Bollywood industry. Here's a turning point in the film. The whole film is super interesting. I love how it goes into each aspect of the actor's lives, talks about their contributions and the familial legacies. But to me, it just did not make sense to break down all these intricacies, as it does not really point towards the direction of what the film wants to do. Trust me, I would love to talk about how Miss Rose went back to America with her flight attendant husband. Or I'd love to talk about how David Abraham went to Israel to initiate an Olympic Games in order to in order to beat some more of his heritage. But it just did not help accomplish what the film wants to do. So this is why I'm going to get a little bit more critical right here about what the what the film accomplishes. First goal of the film is to highlight lesser known Jewish actors and their contributions lesser known Jewish actors that were on screen for everybody to see, but who are not able to properly show off their heritage on screen. So the film did a really good job of this. It follows all the actors in depth and has a good job trailing off them. But no matter how indepth it was, it just felt unsatisfactory compared to what the film was actually supposed to achieve. It goes into very niche details about their lives. It doesn't actually explain the importance of their Jewish heritage. It'll talk about what they did, who they partied with, and what they accomplished with their movies. But it never really talks about where they're from, except for a few one-off moments like with Miss Rose and her cousin. Even though it doesn't explain their backgrounds, it also fails to properly show the struggles that they went through as Jewish actors in a predominantly Hindu field. There's a part where they talk about how Jewish actors would be jailed and arrested for cultural Eurasian reasons. Guess how many sentences this important piece of history is? One. It was a one-off sentence where they mentioned that some of the people who were on the film cast got arrested for promoting other ideals than classic Hindu and Muslim properties. To me, the film gets lost in the details. Instead of talking about importance, erasure, and Jewish identity within Bollywood, it just mentions their names, says where they're from, and talks about their accolades. Here's something I wrote down that really encapsulates the essence of this film. This film is not really about Jewish culture within Bollywood, but it's more about Indian Jewish people who were in Bollywood. It's more trailing their lives instead of breaking down the importance of it, which to me is a folly. Another weakness of this film is the lack of mention of Indian baseline culture. While the movie doesn't explain the importance of Jewish significance within Bollywood, I really think that it could have benefited from better explaining how Indian contemporary media was before Jewish people by showing an example of it. I think as someone who is very well-versed with the Bollywood scene, I understand what a regular Indian movie was like and how it might have been before Jewish influence. But to an average viewer who does not have as much Jewish experience within the field, it could have been super beneficial. I mean, you can't talk about the essence of something if you don't know what the baseline is. You need a sample in order to actually test the experiment. While I have been really critical about this movie, I really wanted to save the strengths for now because it's actually a super cool movie and I definitely would recommend it to everybody. First of all, the narrative is so moving. Hearing about how the first Indian director ever went to red light districts within India to find actors is just so upsetting to me and it's so awesome that more people don't know about the tremendous impact that Jewish people made on the industry. The structure of the film is awesome. A lot of it starts in the silent era, the golden era, and the exclusive era. The way it follows these actors along the screen is something purely out of narrative and is so awesome to follow along. You can see how their career starts, how it fruits, and how it ends up. Some of the interviewers in the movie are families of the direct actors. Salochana's granddaughter is in the middle. It's actually awesome to see. For me, my favorite part about this movie is the storytelling. This movie builds a scene like no other documentary I've ever seen. It builds a world for you to be entertained and it's super enthralling with the imagery and storyboarding that it puts on. The primary sources that it has with family members of the descendants of these actors is super fun to engage with and I love how it ends the movie with the prologue which kind of goes into how all these descendants are actually making their own Jewish film industry within Bollywood again. Hora's talk of early Jewish influence within the film industry in India made me wonder about how early Jewish culture within Hollywood in the States was any different. In Vincent Brooks' From the Shuttle to Stardom, we see a lot of cool information about parallels between both Jewish cultures in filmmaking. First of all, a lot of these guys had to break through different cultural barriers. In India, they had to break the barrier of having women in the industry and in Hollywood, they had to break the cultural barrier of people changing their last names in order to fit better and navigate the anti-Semitism at the time. Like Issa Daniilovich becoming Kirk Douglas. In both cases too, we see that Jewish people took this filmmaking industry as a place of opportunity as a lot of the early Hollywood moguls were all Jewish-based companies and they were all sons of immigrants or immigrants themselves, which is similar to Indian culture as a lot of these early Jewish actors did not have the best background and actually came there in the hopes of reaching economic prosperity. A parallel I found was from an article of the first Indian Jews in Israel and the racism they faced by Rosh Adria. With this, I found an interesting draw between how both Hollywood and Bollywood were meant for Jewish people to connect with their roots and recognize their own cultures. According to the text, Indians who lived in Israel often watched early Bollywood movies in order to connect with their past and recognize themselves in their own culture. This ties in with what Vincent Brooks says as he says that Jewish people often recognize their own members of their community within these movies and found it easy for them to connect with themselves on screen. In both Hollywood and Bollywood, we see that film is more than just entertainment. Film represents cultural oppression. Film represents economic prosperity. Film represents opportunity and film represents growth. I love how film is a cultural means and medium for Jewish people to connect with their own community members on screen. Film is an awesome way to reconnect with culture. It's something I've been doing all my life. So seeing that Jewish people are doing this in both Bollywood and Hollywood really makes a lot of sense. Now let's hit a little bit personal. I wanted to ask my grandpa who grew up in India in the 1960s about this. He was a huge Bollywood fan back in the day and I wanted to see if he still remembered these Jewish actresses that he grew up with. Due to the conversation taking place in Hindi on both ends, I decided to use a transcript in order to create this segment of the podcast. When asking my grandpa about whether or not he remembered Shilajna, he said this. I never knew she was Jewish. I'm not sure whether she would have been as popular, to be honest. There were no Jews where I lived in Delhi. We all thought she was super fair-skinned and beautiful, to be honest. I think this interaction with my grandpa perfectly shows the Jewish erasure that the documentary tries to point out. So why does Shalom Bollywood matter? It shines a light on the hidden chapter of Indian cinema. These Jewish actresses weren't just stars. They're cultural pioneers, stepping the spotlight when no one else would. They helped shape Bollywood into the vibrant, global phenomenon it is today. Their legacy is still felt in a lot of ways. The fact that there's even musical scenes within movies, which is a huge part of Bollywood, is just due to the fact that one of the first Bollywood movies ever had a Jewish woman singing in it. I'm happy that this film is here to celebrate Bollywood's diversity. It's a cautionary tale to not erase anybody's contributions and to celebrate everybody in full. While the documentary doesn't exactly prove its points in the most effective ways, I think the strength of this lives-less narrative is how it highlights such a niche topic in Indian history and makes it so important, makes it so a scene. I don't think any fan of Bollywood or any fan of Jewish history should watch this movie. It's something so important and super niche that I think everybody should deserve a shot at appreciating. Thank you so much for listening. I really hope you enjoyed. I really want you to know how much fun I had while making this. It was a really good excuse to talk to my grandpa, and I really hope to reconnect with my family over Bollywood movies while making this. Thanks.