Page 89 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

76 << Industrial Identity in an Era of Reform

Established by Ram Gopal Varma with initial financial backing from K
Sera Sera, a company started by Non-Resident Indians, the production
company was initially called Varma Corporation Limited (VCL). In Feb-
ruary 2003, K Sera Sera entered into an agreement with VCL to produce
films. Later that same year, K Sera Sera signed an agreement with Sahara
India, a major conglomerate, as well as Priya Village Roadshow (PVR), a
company that has played a key role in reconfiguring the exhibition sector
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across urban India. While the deal with Sahara India ensured a steady
financing stream and the opportunity for additional revenues by broad-
casting films on Sahara’s television channel (Sahara One), the agreement
with PVR targeted marketing and distribution. Building on a series of hit
films including Satya (Truth, 1998), Company (2000), and Bhoot (Ghost,
2003), Varma had by this time rebranded his company as The Factory and
established himself as a versatile and edgy filmmaker whose films also suc-
ceeded at the box office.
Observing that Ram Gopal Varma’s identity and mode of production is
as much a part of Bollywood as that represented by Karan Johar or Aditya
Chopra, Ravi Vasudevan goes on to argue that The Factory “appears to
have opened up a different network of industrial access than those con-
trolled by film-making dynasties, their families, business partners, hangers-
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on and protégés.” Thus the ways in which companies managed by “sec-
ond-generation industry kids” like Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra, Vishesh
Bhatt, and Goldie Behl are positioned in Bollywood or, for that matter,
influential firms like The Factory or Pritish Nandy Communications, sug-
gest neither corporate dominance nor resistance on the part of small-scale
companies and family businesses. The picture of Bollywood that emerges at
the end of a decade of corporatization is that of a space of media produc-
tion whose contours are being shaped by interactions among a range of
players negotiating the transition to a new phase of capital and new modes
of speculation.

Conclusion

Building on the analysis of changing relations among the Indian state, the
media industries, and the Indian diaspora in the previous chapter, I have
focused attention here on the tenth anniversary of the FICCI-FRAMES
convention as a way to examine the impact that a decade of corporatization
has had on the Bombay film industry. As it turned out, the panel discus-
sions at FRAMES 2009 revealed a far more complex and hybrid media
landscape than the official narrative of the emergence of a corporatized