Dubbing angers Tamil film fans
Activist says group has been sidelined -- again
A LOCAL lobby group has denounced the broadcasting of Tamil films dubbed into Hindi on a new entertainment channel.
Tamil Action Group spokesman Michael Lachimiah wrote to Glow TV this week saying it was “totally unacceptable” that the entertainment channel aired Tamil content that had been dubbed into Hindi, given the already meagre content available to Tamil viewers.
The Hindi film industry is popularly known as “Bollywood”, and the Tamil industry as “Kollywood”.
“Indian entertainment in South Africa is completely monopolised by Bollywood due to injustices in the past,” Lachimiah wrote to channel head Yusuf Nabee.
“The most disappointing aspect is that original Kollywood movies are being dubbed into Hindi and shown on Glow TV. For example, the hugely popular Kollywood movie Padayappa, starring the most popular actor in India, Rajinikanth, was dubbed into Hindi. This is preposterous. This is a gross disservice to your south-Indian viewers. ”
Lachimiah added that the lobby group had held meetings with Omar Essack, the CEO of Kagiso Media — which owns Glow TV — about broadcasting more south-Indian content, to no avail.
The channel, launched on broadcaster OpenView HD in October last year, recently also became available on DStv.
Essack said the channel did not dub its content. “We buy a slate of content from a distributor and within the slate there will be programming that’s been dubbed into other languages. Because we try to buy in bulk, we cannot dictate specific terms to the distributor.”
Essack said the channel’s content strategy was still evolving.
“Our primary motivation when selecting content is accessibility to all South Africans, hence the original language of the content is not our starting point. Of course, our programming will include programming that may originate in south India.”
Essack said his company’s research had shown that it was not only South Africans of Indian descent who enjoyed content from the subcontinent.