After decades of absorbing North America’s cultural diplomacy, India is returning the favour, with Indian government officials announcing plans to locate North America’s first Indian Cultural Centre in Toronto.

It's a country known for its stunning safari landscapes, long beaches and towering Mount Kilimanjaro. And according to documentary film-maker Nick Broomfield -- Tanzania is also the perfect natural film set. But though it has its own film festival, Zanzibar is paradoxically without a cinema. Broomfield is pledging his support for the renovation of a dilapidated art deco cinema in Stone Town.

Sushi’s rise to globalism has attracted a lot of attention in recent years...Both documentaries offer a penetrating introduction to the workings of the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, the world’s largest, as well as the growing “local” character of sushi in the West.

Fatuous, clichéd or selective depictions of Bangkok by visiting filmmakers are so commonplace that foreign residents quickly stop registering them. What did puzzle me at first was why Thais weren't more upset by The Hangover Part II, and why the government of Thailand — which, as a major tourist destination, is rightly obsessed about its global image — allowed it to be filmed there.

Even non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the USA somehow influence the US citizens by projecting Indian power in the South Asian region. They use soft power i.e. colorful culture of India like yoga, films, and India shining publicity which covers up the rampant poverty, hunger, crime, human rights abuses especially in Kashmir and Naxalite-Maoist areas, Muslim massacre in Gujrat and Christian massacre in Orisa etc

Just as the American culture industries, especially Hollywood, were instrumental in constructing and disseminating the narrative about the attraction of the United States that helped make it the most influential player on the world stage in the 20th century, the rise in the popularity of Bollywood films could help to do the same for India in the 21st.

Rupert Murdoch has warned China that it will encourage piracy and limit opportunities for its own booming movie market if it does not open up to foreign films, in the latest sign of western media owners' frustrations with Chinese restrictions.