Durban: In a sign of Bollywood's growing popularity overseas, South Africa's national public broadcaster SABC will air for the first time a series of Hindi films over a period of 13 weeks.

The movies, starting with Devdas, will be broadcast from April 3 on the corporation's TV3 channel.

Other movies in the line-up include 'Company' and ' Bombay', Publicity Manager, Michael Van Dyk, said in a statement today (Feb 15, 2004).

"All the movies will have English sub-titles," he said.

"We shall test the response depending on the audience, and thereafter decide our approach to Bollywood," he added.

"Judging from global response, there is a positive attitude to Indian products like the 'Kumars at No 42' that have been popular."

Van Dyk said Bollywood had come up as potential success from the research they had carried out.

"A lot of time was spent in choosing the movies. We looked at content, the director and the appeal of the movie to a crossover audience. A deciding factor was also how popular the movie was when it was on circuit."

The move by the national broadcaster has been welcomed by organisations of Indian origin people as "long overdue".

"We should have had Indian movies a long time ago", said Bala Naidoo, president of the Natal Tamil Federation.

"Now that the SABC has decided to show Bollywood movies we hope that the SABC would also consider movies in other languages," he added.