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23-10-2008

Bollywood movies drive Polish newspaper sales

By Katarzyna Grynienko
    After finding marketing success by offering movie collections along with the daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, the newspaper has found a new marketing tool: Bollywood movies.

    Bollywood movies have become the new "discovery" for Central Europeans. Poles took to the Indian films after the first screening of Sometimes Happiness, Sometimes Sorrow directed by Karan Johar during the Era New Horizon's Festival 2005.

    The surprisingly positive reaction of the audience convinced Gutek Film's creative director Jakub Duszynski to introduce more pictures made in Hindu Hollywood to the Polish market. The result was a growing interest in Indian cinema and culture beginning in 2006. But the films were available only in cinemas or on the internet, where the usually appeared without translations.

    Gazeta Wyborcza has begun building on the Bollywood success by distributing Bollywood DVDs with newspaper on a weekly basis. Each edition with a Bollywood movie has sold an additional 50,000 more copies, even with an extra 2 euros tacked on to the price.

    The collection started with the title Fanaa directed by Kunal Kohli, a hit at the 2007 edition of the Era New Horizons festival, which was shoot partly in the Polish Tatra Mountains. The series continued with Love stories directed by Aditya Chopra and Heart is Crazy by Yash Chopra.

    The publishers are banking on Bollywood to continue the drive to lift newspapers out of the recession that hit the industry in 2006.