A blue film is a film associated with the amateur underground pornography industry in India.[1][2] Other names for the industry include the more reserved 'human trafficking,' which refers to the perceived belief that participants have little or no control over their participation in the films due to economic pressures from the Indian underground crime syndicates, as they are 'trafficked' around.
[edit] Indian government response
While the Indian government has attempted to limit or prevent the production and distribution of such tapes, manufacturers have become increasingly creative, even following the precedents set by the Japanese and American pornography industries and offering the films in animated format.[3] The name ostensibly comes from the fact that to maintain anonymity in the past, video participants masked their identities via blue bars across their eyes added during video post-processing.[citation needed] Unverified online sources also indicate that the slang finds its origins in that during the 1980s, pornographic video cassettes were sealed using blue tape.
[edit] Kalyug and Bollywood
In 2005, Mohit Suri directed a movie called Kalyug in 2005, starring Smilie Suri and Kunal Khemu. The movie was produced by Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt. The film was originally going to be called Blue Film, but that was considered too controversial, so they changed it. The film attempted to reveal aspects of the industry as a doppelganger to its more mainstream Bollywood counterpart. It was later renamed Kalyug, due to controversy over its title. It deals with a newly married couple caught on camera at a hotel during their honeymoon. The video is released on the Internet and the bride ultimately commits suicide. The husband, in pursuit of revenge, delves into the world of underground pornography, eventually travelling to Amsterdam and Switzerland to seek out the criminals of the underground pornography industry that profited from the film.
[edit] Blue Film in literature
Blue Film is also the name of a twentieth century short story set in Thailand by the prolific British novelist and playwright Graham Greene.
The story deals with an older married couple that comes across an illegal pornography theater in the backstreets of Saigon. As they are watching a video, the wife realizes the man in the film is actually her husband, and that she has stumbled across an indiscretion of his youth. The wife is at first repulsed, although she eventually forgives him and they make love. While they are intimate, the husband finds himself thinking of the woman he was with thirty years prior and realizes he loves her youthful ideal more than the reality of the woman he is with as an older man.[4]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Suniti Manjrekar. Sexy Deepal Shaw Sheds it all in 'Blue Film'. http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/2121.asp.
- ^ Associated Press. Super sexy bed partners made best amateur blue film in India. http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/4386.asp.
- ^ The Hindu (April 29, 2005). Cartoon blue film racket smashed. http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/29/stories/2005042919440300.htm.
- ^ Graham Greene (1986). Collected Short Stories. Penguin Classics.
