Asia's Bouncing World of Movies

Okay, movie buffs and trivia fans everywhere, it's name-that-star time: What saturninely handsome actor is signed up for 170, that's right, 170 movies, with 50 of them currently in production ?

No need to feel abashed at not knowing the answer: Indian Actor Shashi Kapoor, 38, is one of the stars in the Asian moviemaking world whose output is prodigious by Hollywood standards but who is seldom seen in the U.S. (Shashi did play opposite Hayley Mills in Pretty Polly.) For the most part, that is just as well. No other region of the world produces such a concoction of Kung Fu, scifi, porn, soapers, chasers and period pieces with such uneven degrees of tackiness and brilliance. From India to Japan, the film studios of Asia churn out more than 1,200 pictures a year, the work of moguls like Hong Kong's Run Run Shaw (see box) and one-shot entrepreneurs and ephemeral actors. A survey of the state of the industry in Asia's major countries:

In INDIA, 8 million people go to the movies every day. That is less than 2% of the population, but a market large enough to inspire 400 new films a year. "In the frenetic Indian movie industry," reports TIME Correspondent James Shepherd, "stars are not only born in a night but burn out in a night. Producers consider themselves lucky if they wind up a picture with enough money for a new car, a new mistress and a bottle of Scotch." With stars demanding six-figure salaries, a ho-hum Hindi movie costs around $500,000. Production is sluggish, often taking a year.

A few stars, like Shashi Kapoor, classical dancer Gopi Krishna and lovely Shabana Azmi, 24, do very well working hard at their trade. Most days Shashi, for instance, does two eight-hour acting stints on different Bombay lots, often for his brother Raj's production company. On others, he'll hop a plane for Srinagar for a day's shooting in Kashmir, or roar off in his white Mercedes to Pune (formerly Poona) for a locationer. Then he will rush back to Bombay to read the script for Last Train to Pakistan, his next starring vehicle, and perhaps consider offers from abroad.

In Indian movies, not even kissing is permitted, though frottage (the rubbing of one clothed body against another) is allowed. Moviegoers get mainly what Shashi calls a kedgeree (a spicy dish of rice, peas and shredded onions). This appears on the screen as a mishmash of singing, dancing and bare fisticuffs, all revolving around impossible plots in which babies get swapped by villainous doubles and village belles with painted fingernails run off with rich landowners, who leave wives of unimaginable fortitude behind them. Into this unlikely mix go dubbed songs by so-called "playback singers," who become stars in their own right. Says Manohar Lai Bharadwaj, manager of Asha Film Distributors: "We never distribute movies with social themes because they have been total failures."

Movie actresses are the main stylesetters in India, both in manners and morals. Zeenat Aman, who claims to be 24 but is closer to 30, has personally replaced the sari with blue jeans in millions of young Indian women's wardrobes. Parveen Babi, 22, the fastest-rising new star, is presently acting in 20 movies. One reason Indian movie fans are fascinated with Parveen, aside from her sleek figure, is because of her candor. Young men and women all over India claim that it is the swinging lives of the stars that are suddenly making them much less hesitant about jumping into bed with each other. Indian Essayist Nirad C. Chaudhuri charges India's cinema with being the "aphrodisiac" responsible for his country's exploding population, which seems slightly unfair, since the birth rate was soaring long before movies.

In any case, cinema has now become India's seventh-largest industry. In all, 65 studios and 38 film laboratories spend $82 million to supply movies in 15 official languages to almost 9,000 Indian theaters (annual box office: $256 million). Bombay is the home of the big-budget Hindi hits, but it is Calcutta that has earned for India most of its international cinematic acclaim. That is mainly because of Satyajit Ray. Using Calcutta's swirling misery as a background for his low-budget masterpieces, Director Ray depicts Indian life with poignant realism. His famous trilogy, Song of the Road, The Unvanquished, and The World of Apu, has been applauded at film festivals all over the world, as has his more recent Distant Thunder. But Ray's movies are not popular in India. His new release, Jana Aranya, opened unheralded this spring in three obscure Calcutta movie houses.

In TAIWAN, movies last year attracted an audience of 235 million, indicating that every person on the island saw an average of 15 movies. Seven production companies with 20 sound stages turn out 120 films a year, mainly teenage tearjerkers, but occasional quality flicks too. A Touch of Zen, by renowned Director King Hu, won the Cannes Film Festival top prize in 1975 for technique. Ting Shan-Hsi, winner of the Asia Film Festival Best Director award, has just completed a $2.5 million epic called 800 Heroes, using a cast of 50,000 troops, 30 navy vessels and 50 refitted air force planes. Ting had a problem: protecting his players. Thirty had to be hospitalized because real TNT was used in some of the action scenes.

In the PHILIPPINES, Filipinos spend 20% of their leisure money on movies. Nearly 200 films are now being produced annually. Locally made skin flicks, called bomba, have been dampened by martial law sensibilities, so producers are now filming what they call "bold" movies, which are only slightly less explicit. The Philippines' most popular actor-director-producers are Joseph Estrada, who in real life is mayor of San Juan, and Fernando Poe Jr. Both are masters of swashbuckling adventures. Poe has just been signed to play the guerrilla hero Ferdinand Marcos -who was one in World War II and is now the country's strong-willed president.

THAILAND is spawning a new wave of versatile film makers concerned with such local problems as teenage prostitution and guerrilla terror. But they also do occasional excellent non-message films. Actress-Writer-Producer Patra-vadee Sritrairat, 28, a bright and beautiful newcomer, has made a sensitive movie called Games that is the sophisticated story of a triangular bisexual love affair. A splashy sidelight of the industry is movie-poster art. In Bangkok, block-long billboards picturing grotesque snake-entwined monsters hovering over eviscerated women may cost $40,000 and take 36 artists to paint. These gargantuan murals, which used to be thrown away, are suddenly being bought up by European museums. Som-boonsuk Niyomsiri, one of Bangkok's foremost poster painters, has gone on to become Thailand's biggest film producer -under the name of Piak Poster. His latest movie, American Surplus, deals with the discrimination suffered by the bastard offspring of black American GIs stationed in Thailand during the Viet Nam war.

Tiny HONG KONG boasts of one of the region's healthiest film industries, but elsewhere in Southeast Asia film production is skimpy. Indonesia produced 35 titles last year, but imported another 400. Malaysia's production is even more paltry, though the government recently announced plans to establish a national film corporation. In socialist Burma there remain 100 privately owned companies. But only ten have their own cameras, and the government restricts the import of film. All of Burma's movie houses have been nationalized. South Korea produced 94 films last year. But the melodramas were so low grade that they are never likely to be seen outside of the country, or even very widely inside. In fact, Korean audiences are so turned off by movies that 35 cinemas have closed down in the past two years.

In JAPAN, once a leader in quality movies, the film business is depressed. The thicket of TV antennas sprouting over Tokyo rooftops explains the country's state better than any statistics. Practically every Japanese home has a TV set. New film releases last year totaled 333. More than two-thirds of these were "pinkies," as Japanese call their mass-produced pornos -the kind that Actor Mitsuyasu Maeno starred in until he died a kamikaze's flaming death crashing a Piper Cherokee onto the home of Lockheed Lobbyist Yoshio Kodama (TIME April 5). Box office receipts were deceptively high, totaling $390 million. But more than half the revenue came from a succession of smash-hit imports: Earthquake (which reminded Japanese of their own killer quake of 1923), Towering Inferno, Emmanuelle and Jaws.

The problem of Japan's film industry is also reflected by polls that show that 80% of all Japanese prefer not to leave home to see a movie. As a result, some 5,000 of Japan's 7,500 movie houses have been closed or converted into bowling alleys and supermarkets. Time was when the great Japanese directors like Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa were winning film festivals all over the world with movies like An Autumn Afternoon, Rashomon and Seven Samurai. Today Kurosawa has priced himself out of the local market.

The new directors seem intent on pandering to the yens of teen-agers with such potboiler adventures as Nihon Chimbotsu (Submersion of Japan) and with action comedies centering on everyday life like Turaku Yam (Truck Rascals). Another new trend is toward the realistic documentation of World War II. Advance into the Pacific made use of combat footage shot by both American and Japanese cameramen. Hero in the Sky, a film about one of Japan's greatest wartime aces, may end up violating the postwar taboo on celebrating Japanese feats of war.

Despite Japan's doldrums, Asia's film industry as a whole is likely to continue booming. The audiences obviously like what they see -however limited it may be -and the moviemakers will doubtlessly go on giving them what they want. Like their counterparts in Hollywood, the Asian Film men keep their eyes on the cash registers and their illusions on the screen.

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