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Can Bollywood Rescue Film Biz in Vancouver?

Arthur J Pais

Next time Aditya Chopra or Rishi Kapoor is scouting for foreign locations, a call to Moe Sihota could help.

Sihota, public services minister for British Columbia, suggested the Canadian province should actively seek Indian and other Asian film-producers to shoot their movies in his province.

For more than a decade, each year over two dozen Hollywood movies and television shows have been shot in and around Vancouver, the colorful British Columbian city, popularly known as Canada's Hollywood.

But the $ 20 million annual business Vancouver has been attracting from Hollywood could start climbing down if Hollywood trade unions succeed in keeping movie production back home.

"We would love to work with Hollywood but we should not have one egg in our basket," Sihota, one of the most prominent Indian Canadian politicians, said this week. He added that details of the packages to be offered to Asian film-makers would be worked out at the finance ministry. He is aware of the growing number of Indian films being shot in Europe and the United States. British Columbia offers dramatic scenery, colorful locale and film technicians with years of experience, he argues.

Vancouver -- and to a lesser extent, Montreal and Toronto -- started attracting Hollywood producers because the Canadian cities have no effective trade unions for movie workers. A Hollywood producer shooting a film in Canada instead of the United States would typically save about 20 per cent of his budget.

But Hollywood trade union leaders -- faced by drastic cuts in job opportunities for their members -- began demanding a few months ago that producers shot around Los Angles or in other parts of America.

British Columbia has nearly half a million people of Indian origin.

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