Danny Ben-Moshe, a documentary filmmaker, focuses on India’s Jewish community and their contributions to Indian cinema. Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema is his most recent project. The documentary is light and airy, with music, dance, and melodrama, which were popular at the time. It was difficult for him to find archival footage because so little of it has been preserved, but he works around these limitations with skill, managing to keep the audience’s attention with interesting insights, interviews with living descendants, and interviews with movie personalities. The film was recently screened at the Jewish Film Festival in San Francisco.
Since the Mogul dynasty, Jews have lived in India and have successfully integrated into the country’s culture. They arrived as merchants and gradually established themselves in the country. Some of them had fled Baghdad and the surrounding nations because of persecution. In a secular republic, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and Christians coexisted. Jewish synagogues can be found all over India, but the most prominent is in Cochin, in the south.
Cinema arrived in India well over a century ago, but there were no performers prepared to appear on camera in those early years because it was a profession frowned upon by Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Men took on the roles of both male and female characters. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Jewish women with a more open culture stepped in to save the day and were warmly accepted; with their western appearance and attitudes, they dominated the silver screen.
Source: https://www.goldenglobes.com/articles/new-documentary-chronicles-jewish-contributions-indian-cinema
