NEWSLINKS
Y2K BIZ FEATURES
INDIA & THE W.T.O.
NEW GOVERNMENT
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
COMMENTARY
CREDIT POLICY
BUDGET 1999-2000
USEFUL INFO
ARCHIVES
SEARCH REDIFF

Indian tourists, film-makers make a beeline for New Zealand

A Bollywood love story is creating a lucrative industry in New Zealand and bringing hundreds of new tourists in on its celluloid dreams.

While 38 Hindi movies have been made here in the last three years, October's Kaho Na Pyar Hai is leaving officials stunned.

New Zealand's New Delhi-based South Asia trade commissioner, Peter Healy, says the government spent around NZ $ 5,000, or US $ 2,481, to attract the film's producers.

In return came a three-hour movie which heavily featured New Zealand and which has been seen by 300 million people, as well as paying around $ 400,000 in wages and hire costs to the New Zealand film industry.

Director Rakesh Roshan -- whose son Hritik Roshan played the lead with Amisha Patel -- is heading back to make two more movies, as are dozens of other film makers, bailing out of Switzerland.

Healy called Fiji Indian Kamal Singh, who organises Hindi movies in New Zealand, 'our secret weapon'.

Singh is currently on the road with another big budget movie starring Mahesh Babu and former Miss India Namrata Shirodkar.

After leaving Fiji following the 1987 coup, Singh sold farm insurance in New Zealand which took him around most of the country.

"That is when I realised how beautiful New Zealand is," he says.

In 1993, he formed a company and advertised in the movie press in Bombay offering to assist Bollywood companies in New Zealand.

He got one reply. And when that director showed up, Kamal gave him a free tour of New Zealand. But he came back in 1995 and spent 45 days shooting the first Hindi move here.

There followed 18 months of quiet. But then another film producer came, and then another.

"We offer everything and we do everything," says Singh of his family operation.

New Zealanders are hired for most of the technical positions, as well as dancers for the big music sequences.

The new industry has put New Zealand in direct competition with Switzerland.

Switzerland is closer to India, but the New Zealand dollar is attractive to foreign film-makers. After airfares are added, costs tend to even out added and the decision on location are often made on the attraction of the new and unseen.

The jewel is Queenstown in the Southern Alps. One director said of it: "You can get Switzerland here, and much, much more."

"Most of directors say, in their words, it's out of this world," Singh says.

Hindi directors often use the scenery Kiwi film-makers tend to avoid. Grand mountain scenes, city squares, lots of sheep and other farm animals and, as background, ordinary New Zealanders. Rakesh Roshan told the New Zealand Herald his film's success had a lot to do with the location.

"The new location heightens the romance and makes the story believable in that people think that if they were in a beautiful place like that, they would fall in love too," he said. "It's a lovely place to shoot. The people are straightforward, fun-loving, good-humoured and helpful. The contractors are excellent. We had brilliant service from the lighting crew and the catering contractors and the many other companies involved in making the movie.

"We don't attract the big crowds in New Zealand that we do in India and we are left to get on with the job. The scenery is great, the cost is competitive, but the people and the service is the biggest draw."

Tourists are following behind, drawn from the 200 to 250 million-strong middle class in India, said to be the fastest growing in the world. Last year, according to India's Ministry of Tourism, 3.9 million of them travelled abroad.

Last year, even before Kaho Na Pyar Hai, Indian tourism to New Zealand rose 25 per cent to 8,500 visitors. Switzerland currently attracts 100,000 Indians a year.

Almost all the Hindi movies here use Queenstown, and tourist operators who several years ago never saw an Indian now report busloads. Tales of Indian shoppers spending $ 20,000 a time abound.

Kamal Singh has other ideas too: commercials. Already Indian motorcycle, condom and ice cream advertisements have been made.

Healy says the film crews are always on the look out for new locations.

"They like New Zealand for its green fields, flowers, blue water and snow," he said. "Our advantage is that we can deliver all within a few hours' drive of Christchurch."