Entertainment
Billion stories to tell: Oscar-winning US director on India
New Delhi: New York-based Oscar-winning director Megan Mylan has often taken inspiration from India for her documentaries like “Smile Pinki” and “After My Garden Grows”. But she is not tired of making films on the country as she believes there are numerous stories to present to the audience.
The director of “Lost Boys of Sudan” first visited India around six years back to make the Oscar-winning documentary “Smile Pinki”, based on a five-year-old girl from Varanasi with a severe cleft lip.
“I ended up in India when I made ‘Smile Pinki’. It was such a privileged way to get to know this country. When I reached Varanasi, people were calling it a small town, but for Americans if a town has a million people, it’s not small,” Mylan told IANS in a telephonic interview during her visit to the capital.
“I got to see the ancient place, the sacredness of it. I also met wonderful educated doctors. I got to see an interesting side of India while making the film and then when we came back, I toured cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai and I got to see another side of India. There are a billion people and billion stories to tell here,” she added.
Back to the country on a multi-city tour to promote her latest project “After My Garden Grows”, she wishes she had more time in hand to be inspired again.
“I wish I had more time to meet people. We went to a radio station and I thought this could be an interesting documentary. I am always on the lookout,” said Mylan, who makes character-driven documentaries on social issues.
“After My Garden Grows”, about girl child marriages in India that tells the story of Monika, a rural Indian teenager growing food to feed her family, and the seeds of her own independence, in a tiny rooftop garden, is currently screened in cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad and will be shown in theatres till Nov 20.
The movie also got support from Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan, who recently hosted its special screening in Mumbai. Mylan, who has been making non-fiction films for almost two decades, thinks documentaries getting support from Bollywood stars is a good way to make it popular in the country.
“It’s incredibly powerful. Documentaries start out with the challenge of audiences remembering them as dreadfully boring films they watched in high school. But if people who have a big audience can tell their fans to give it a try, it will help,” she said.
Asked if she would like to make a fiction film with any Bollywood celebrity, she said: “I love what I do. I am not sure if I’ll be good at fiction filmmaking. But life takes you to an unexpected path. I don’t say no to anything, but it’s not the path I am aiming for. I can make documentaries for the rest of my life.”
But Mylan is impressed by the way Hindi movies are made.
“Bollywood films are incredible productions. We don’t have anything like it in the US. It’s impressive,” she said.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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