When Yale University sophomores Serrena Iyer and Shashwata Narain discovered last year that they both liked filmmaking, they didn’t think much would come of it.

Now, the two students are co-producing their own Bollywood movie.

Iyer and Narain are not doing it to gain career experience – both are majoring in math-related fields. For them, it is about doing what they enjoy and honoring their cultural traditions.

‘We approached this project purely from a fun standpoint,’ Narain said. ‘There are so many things we are doing at the university for our résumés, for our careers, etc. We approached this movie as something we just wanted to do for fun in our semesters.’

The two sophomores started writing the script for ‘Bulldogs in Bollywood: Shake it Like Shahrukh!’ when they received a $1,000 grant from Yale’s Sudler Fund. The Sudler Fund grant is a semester long, arts-based award which was established in 1986 to support on-campus creative and performing arts. In the past, the grant has supported dramatic, musical, dance, video or film productions, literary publications and exhibitions, according to Yale’s Web site.

‘There is a lot of interest about Bollywood at Yale, but there isn’t much being done about it,’ said Narain, the film’s musical director. ‘We were interested in Bollywood and movies, so we both kind of came up with this idea to go ahead and make a Bollywood movie.’

‘Shake it Like Shahrukh!’ which will be filmed on the Yale campus, centers around Ashish, an Indian-American Yale student, who is at the university to study mechanical engineering. Ashish surprises his friends and family when he decides that he would rather ‘break out of the mold,’ and pursue theater studies – something Narain said is ‘pretty out of the box.’

‘It’s a lot of fun watching Yale students running around campus and singing Bollywood,’ Iyer, the director for the film, added.

Though the 15-20 minute film will focus on tackling Indian stereotypes, the parody will include everything that has come to be associated with Bollywood films.

‘There’s romance, song and dance and the real drama: telling his parents he’s not going to be a mechanical engineering major,’ Iyer said with a laugh.

The film comes at a time of increased interest in South East Asian culture on campus, Iyer said. Yale now offers an undergraduate seminar on Bollywood films, a South Asian Film Society and weekly Bollywood film screenings, according to the Yale Daily News.

The students are currently holding acting auditions for the film, and the crew will similarly be comprised of Yale students. Because of the difficulty of the task, which includes an original script as well as a musical score, Narain said she will guarantee everyone who auditions a spot in the production. At least 89 people have already signed up to work on the film.

‘We are kind of realizing the magnitude of making this movie now that we’ve started going about it. It is going to be a challenge,’ she said. ‘I’m just hoping that our enthusiasm is contagious and catches on and we can get through this.’

Bringing the university’s South Asian population together is definitely a benefit for Iyer, who said that the sense of Indian pride is much stronger at the university level than in her hometown. Iyer said she feels that, even though there was an Indian population where she went to high school, they had nothing to collaborate on like the Bollywood film they’re creating at Yale.

‘It’ll be interesting to get them all together for one fun thing, one fun film. I would just like it to be a fun project that people will feel like they can enjoy being a part of,’ she said.

lefulton@syr.edu

Published on October 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm

Contact Lorne: lefulton@syr.edu