User Reviews

I've been eagerly awaiting to see this project since it's inception back in 2013. I'm giving full marks as to revealing an otherwise entirely unrecognized cultural contribution... Unfortunately there is enough material to make a really fine 20-30 minute short, not an hour and a quarter documentary! Fascinating info about Jewish film pioneers creating and starring in the Bollywood genre is padded out with story lines from their films and repetitive family interviews. A re-edit is in order.

Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema(2017) was written and directed by Danny Ben-Moshe. It tells the fascinating story of Indian Jewish women, who acted in the early Bollywood films. Muslim and Hindu women weren't allowed to appear on screen. Jewish women, who could appear in movies, became nationally-known movie stars.

As an added insight, I was reminded that Jews in India have never known anti-Semitism. India is probably the only country that has not stigmatized or repressed the Jews. The Jewish Indian community has lasted for over two thousand years!

It's unfortunate that the movie is boring. We get very few clips of the Jewish women acting, singing, or dancing. We get many talking head interviews with their children or grandchildren. Mostly, they tell the same story: Mom was beautiful and rich, then not so beautiful, and poor.

We saw this movie at the JCC Hart Theatre, as part of Rochester's excellent Jewish Film Festival. It will work well on DVD. I wouldn't suggest seeking out this film in order to see it. However, if it's playing at a festival, you could do worse.

This is an awful piece of content that reduces history to a talk about body figure and cleavage. It seems they totally lost the point of what they intended to do.