Bollywood's second home: Dubai, where receptiveness of Bollywood movies is ... - Economic Times

Twenty five-year-old Arab singer Wiam Dahmani is the perfect example of the influence Bollywood wields in multiethnic Dubai. Dahmani's mother is a UAE national and her father Moroccan, yet she can speak Hindi, having "grown up on Indian films". As presenter of a new weekend TV show on Bollywood on a private television channel, Dahmani is obsessed with Hindi films. "I have scores of Arab viewers emailing me to say I look like Katrina Kaif," says Dahmani, whose job description includes jetting to Mumbai for celebrity interviews and swaying to chartbusting Bollywood numbers on her 22minute show.

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Twenty five-year-old Arab singer Wiam Dahmani is the perfect example of the influence Bollywood wields in multiethnic Dubai. Dahmani's mother is a UAE national and her father Moroccan, yet she can speak Hindi, having "grown up on Indian films". As presenter of a new weekend TV show on Bollywood on a private television channel, Dahmani is obsessed with Hindi films. "I have scores of Arab viewers emailing me to say I look like Katrina Kaif," says Dahmani, whose job description includes jetting to Mumbai for celebrity interviews and swaying to chartbusting Bollywood numbers on her 22minute show. "The relation between the Arab audience and Indian cinema is historical," says an executive with a general entertainment channel. "In the 70s, there weren't as many expatriates in the GCC and it was the locals from Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait who patronised Indian films," he says. Over the past 10 years, the channel has seen this demand surge, more recently, reporting a 29% increase in Arab viewership across West Asia and North Africa.

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Twenty five-year-old Arab singer Wiam Dahmani is the perfect example of the influence Bollywood wields in multiethnic Dubai. Dahmani's mother is a UAE national and her father Moroccan, yet she can speak Hindi, having "grown up on Indian films". As presenter of a new weekend TV show on Bollywood on a private television channel, Dahmani is obsessed with Hindi films. "I have scores of Arab viewers emailing me to say I look like Katrina Kaif," says Dahmani, whose job description includes jetting to Mumbai for celebrity interviews and swaying to chartbusting Bollywood numbers on her 22minute show. "The relation between the Arab audience and Indian cinema is historical," says an executive with a general entertainment channel. "In the 70s, there weren't as many expatriates in the GCC and it was the locals from Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait who patronised Indian films," he says. Over the past 10 years, the channel has seen this demand surge, more recently, reporting a 29% increase in Arab viewership across West Asia and North Africa. "Our movies appeal to their sensibilities because of our cultural similarities; even Egyptian and Lebanese films feature song and dance routines," says a business development executive with a popular Indian radio channel in Dubai.

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Bollywood's second home: Dubai, where receptiveness of Bollywood movies is ... - Economic Times