Inaugurating the second Mongolian
film festival at the state-run film complex Nandan during his visit to Kolkata,
earlier known as Calcutta, Mongolian Parliament Speaker D. Demberei said
Bollywood actors are immensely popular in Mongolia, which shows that cinema
surpasses language and borders.

“The Mongolian people love to watch Indian movies. They are fans of
yesteryear actors ranging from Raj Kapoor to Amitabh Bachchan to present day
Bollywood stars,” Demberei said. “The ties between the two countries
go beyond politico-economic exchanges and are a cultural communion between
creative persons.”

He said he had been mesmerised by his visit to Jorasanko, the birthplace of
Rabindranath Tagore, and referred to a member of his team who had spent some
time at Santiniketan.
Demberei, whose visit followed that of Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar to
Mongolia earlier, expressed hope that the inaugural screening of the popular
film “”The Mongols”” will impress the audience.

Explaining how Mongolian cinema had been strongly influenced by the cinema of
Russia, which makes it different from cinematic developments in the rest of
Asia, CEO of Nandan Nilanjan Chattopadhyay said very little has been known
about their movies by the film-going audiences here. “After the socialist
revolution, the Mongolian People”s Revolutionary Party decided to use movies as
an instrument of mass education and from 1926 mobile projection facilities
would regularly show Soviet films to the Mongolian people.”

However, it was a long journey thereafter with the first colour movie “”The
Golden Yurt (Altan Orgoo)”” in 1961, based on a folk tale.

“We should know about their films, the recent movie “”Genghis Khan,
Eternal Power of the Sky””, the first Mongolian-Japanese co-production, the
German-Mongolian co-productions “”The Story of the Weeping Camel”” (the 2003
film was nominated for an Academy Award as foreign documentary in 2005) and
“”The Cave of the Yellow Dog”” (2005), the 2008 historical film “”A Pearl in
the Forest””,” he said.