How to become a Kollywood Star!

I actually can't tell you in fact how to become a starring member of the major Tamil Film industry, but I can provide you links with some fun Tamil things. For example, here's a link about the term Kollywood (not to be confused with Bollywood!) Confusing this with Bollywood would be a faux pas to say the least. Remember that I mentioned the political party DMK? Just as an aside, there is a second party called IDMK which has the exact same ideology, but different leadership...

In any case, the closest thing I can tell you is that Kollywood is extremely active around here. I just learned yesterday in fact that the institute next door is a filming institute. This is where all the new directors and producers of Kollywood are trained. This may in part describe why so many of the movies look and feel the same. While on the way to work yesterday and today (and after lunch both days) there were big film crews just outside the gates of our guest house and hostel complex.
Here's a photo that doesn't show much, except that there's a film crew doing something...

On the set

I think what's happening right now is the filming of some commercial. For what I can't be totally sure. I asked a few people near the set and was told, "shooting." Believe it or not, I already had that little piece of information figured out. So I tried my hardest to conjure up the correct questions in Tamil. Funny enough, I don't know the Tamil translations for "movie" or for "commercial" or "film" or "advertisement." I thought I could get away with "ad?" or "advert?" but again I was met with blank stares. So I asked "Shooting, yena irruku?" Roughly, "what is shooting?" and "what shooting?" I was told "yes, shooting." Oh well, I'm just going to assume it's a commercial and go sulk in my still utter lack of good Tamil communication skills.

However, I should at least send this link to you, dear reader. If you want to watch some Tamil movies online, here's a good sight for it TamilO! I love the name of this sight. "O!" pronounced "WHOA!" with an upward inflection at the end is a Tamil expression of excitement. Something akin to "holy cow" or "SWEET" or even "right on." I spent a little time watching these movies this summer. I personally got tired of them because I could only understand every 100th word or so. I thought I was making real progress, but the flow just wasn't happening. Either way though, it LOOKS like some of these are good movies, but I can't be sure. Perhaps by the end of my time here, they'll want to shoot a Tamil commercial with "that crazy foreigner." I'm not holding my breath though.