Bollywood Britain - Millionaire's Millennium

This time last year, Slumdog was the film that everyone was talking about. Nikki Bedi finds out whether the film has really broken down the cultural barriers between Eastern and Western cinema. The "Noughties" seemed to usher in a new "Golden Age" for Hindi cinema, with talented directors and composers from Mumbai finding their skills being sort after in Hollywood. Films like " Moulin Rouge" seemed to channel the spirit of Bollywood, Andrew Lloyd Webber took " Bombay Dreams " to the West End, and samples taken from filmi music were rife in Western hip hop and pop music. Recently films like Blue, featuring Kylie, have been made with a Western audience in mind and new blockbusters exploring the underbelly of Mumbai are already in production. The creative ground is ripe but Nikki asks why Slumdog succeeded where other films have failed and what lessons both Hollywood and Bollywood can learn from it, as well as taking stock of just what makes Hindi film so distinctive. Slumdog screenplay writer Simon Beaufoy, director Danny Boyle, composer AR Rahman, director Shekhar Kapur, lyricist Javed Akhtar, actor Ben Kingsley, Playback singers Asha Bhosle and Kavita Krishnamurthy Subramanium, superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan, Nitin Sawhney, Tjinder Singh of Cornershop and Trickbaby tell us what they see as the future for Bollywood Britain.