Vancouver: The commercial success of one Bollywood film shot in Vancouver last year sparked a 100% increase in the volume of Indian films produced on the West Coast this year.

Pardes – a traditional Hindi feature with six song-and-dance segments highlighting a typical Indian tale of love, betrayal, villains and heroes – has won filmmaking awards in India equivalent to American Academy Awards.

Also, the feature’s musical segments have been made into a music video for India’s version of MuchMusic. The film used Vancouver’s natural beauty as a backdrop for its production numbers and grossed millions of dollars at the box offices in India and internationally.

‘There has been a definite increase in Bollywood productions,’ says Baljit Sangra, a Vancouver-based locations and production manager who oversees the majority of visiting production from India. She estimates two or three Indian productions were shot here last year and there are more than six Indian productions scheduled for the remainder of 2000 – a record for Vancouver.

Productions from India typically spend up to $150,000 each, representing only a fraction of Vancouver’s annual billion-dollar production volume. Despite the low-dollar totals spent on productions, Sangra says the advantage to Vancouver is increased international exposure.

‘It allows the city to be regarded internationally as an ideal location for aesthetic shots,’ she explains.

Because ‘people in India don’t get to travel as much as us,’ Indian productions travel to exotic locations like Vancouver to give domestic audiences a glimse of the world, says Shawn Angelski, production manager of the Bollywood feature From This World to That World, which wrapped production in Vancouver at the end of October.

From This World to That World is a traditional Hindi feature like Pardes filled with love and betrayal. In addition to Vancouver, Squamish and Whistler locations were used for the musical sequences as well as staging for a few action scenes.

The production has spent up to $150,000, hired 30 locals as crew, and cast eight locals for a dance scene.

The B.C. Film Commission says it has not actively wooed Bollywood productions, so this latest wave of Indian features has happened on its own and without location marketing costs. This kind of natural promotion contributes to the marked increased in foreign coproductions shot here each year, the commission adds. *