Valentine Marc Nkwame
27 June 2009
Arusha — Bollywood may soon open shop here. Local scenery precisely National Parks have impressed a visiting Hindi film producer who arrived here last week among the delegation of Asian tour agents.
After sampling local sceneries in Northern Tanzania, the Hindi movie star and film producer Kumar Gaurav, hopes to be able to use the country's landscapes as settings for some of his future Asian flicks.
"We may not shoot an entire film here for starters but could use the Northern Tanzania sceneries as background scenes for some of our future productions," stated Kumar. He expressed the possibility of even setting up a film making venture here if all goes well.
But which areas attracted him most? "Ngorongoro was spellbinding but then so did Serengeti apparently this is the only place on earth where you can see wildlife without necessarily having to visit National park because by the time we reached the parks we had already seen most of the animals along the roads," he stated.
Bushbuck Safaris of Arusha took the responsibility of taking the team of 12 Mumbai based Travel agents, Media personalities and the Hindi film star around Northern Tourism attractions such as Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro and Serengeti.
The familiarization trip was the first time that Kumar Gaurav, who is also a promoter for the Mumbai based Island Holidays of India, to see Tanzania. His only African experience was limited to South Africa and (once) Kenya.
Kumar has so far starred in Hindi 25 films but also took part in three successful Hollywood (American) titles, The Gang, Reservoir Dogs and Guiana 1838.
"What I have seen so far is good, in fact may incorporate some Tanzanian scenery and attractions in our future productions, but who knows, if all goes well maybe we can even establish another Bollywood here, or should we call that Tanz-wood?" said the Hindi film Director famously known by his screen name 'Bunty.'
Kumar Gaurav was visiting Tanzania as part of the delegation of Indian travel agents who plan to open tourism cooperation with their local counterparts here. The itinerary was organized by Krishna Agencies of Mumbai in Association with Bushbuck Safaris of Arusha and Winglink Travels in Dar-es-salaam.
The Managing Director of Bushbuck Safaris Alhaj Mustafa Panju said what local tourist attractions need at the moment is series of well produced movies and documentaries regularly updated and constantly aired worldwide in order to put Tanzania tourism on the global travel map.
"The films and DVD should also feature local hotels and lodges with any improvements or addition of such facilities highlighted," stated Alhaj Panju. Speaking on behalf of the Indian agents, Jilesh Babla the tour leader assured that most had already planned to start sending clients to Tanzania as soon as they returned to Mumbai.
India handles an annual traffic of over 5 million local and international tourists and the agents want to connect this astounding number to Tanzania in future operations and itineraries.
After touring Northern Tanzania, the delegation flew to Dar-es-salaam city and later Zanzibar the latter is popular in India due to cloves, grown in the isles and that used to be exported to India. Both the Hindi movie star and journalists were looking forward to visit the isles as well.
Gaurav made his film debut with the film Love Story (1981) produced by his father Rajendra Kumar and directed by Rahul Rawail which was a blockbuster hit. Many youngsters started emulating "Bunty" (his nick-name). His next film, the 1982 release Teri Kasam with actress Poonam Dhillon, was a mild success.
He received rave reviews for his performance in Mahesh Bhatt's film Janam (1985) and in the following year he had his second box office hit with Naam (1986), which was produced by his father and also starred his brother-in-law Sanjay Dutt in the lead role.
After a series of flicks, he took a long break from acting in the early 1990s and returned to films in 2000 with a supporting role in the late actor Mazhar Khan's Gang (2000).
In 2002, he shined yet again when he played one of the six protagonists in the crime thriller Kaante, directed by Sanjay Gupta and a remake of the Hollywood hit Reservoir Dogs (2002). Kaante was a moderate success at the box office.
In 2004 he appeared in his first American film Guiana 1838 (2004). This award winning film by Rohit Jagessar grossed the highest screen average at North American box office on its opening weekend and is on the Top 25 all time highest screen average charts. Guiana 1838 tells the story of Indians arriving on the British colony of British Guiana, now Guyana, as Indentured servants amidst the abolition of slavery during the nineteenth century.
According to Kumar Gaurav his latest project is a silent film entitled 'My Daddy is Strongest.'
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