Movies - Cinema of India

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	Movies - Cinema of India

The Indian film industry is the largest in the world (1200 movies were released in the year 2002). India also features the cheapest cost of tickets in the world (the average ticket cost only 20 US cents), and the biggest movie studio in the world, Ramoji Film City . The industry is supported mainly by the vast cinemagoing Indian public, although Indian films have been gaining increasing popularity in the rest of the world — especially in countries with large numbers of expatriate Indians.

Regional film industries

India is a large country where many languages are spoken. Each of the larger languages supports its own film industry: Urdu/Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam.

The Hindi/Urdu film industry, based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), is called 'Bollywood
' (a melding of Hollywood and Bombay).
The Marathi film industry is also based in Mumbai, which is located on the extreme western edge of the state of Maharashtra, the rural regions of which are Marathi-speaking.
The Tamil film industry
is based in the Kodambakkam area of Chennai, South India, and hence is sometimes called 'Kollywood'.
'Tollygunge' is a metonym for the Bengali film industry, long centered in the Tollygunge district of Kolkata (Calcutta). The Bengali industry is notable for having nurtured the director Satyajit Ray, an internationally renowned filmmaker and a winner of many awards, among them the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian award), the Legion d'honneur (France), and the Lifetime achievement Academy Award.
The Kannada film industry, based in Karnataka State, is sometimes called 'Sandalwood', as Karnataka is known for its sandalwood; however, this term does not seem to be in widespread use.
The Telugu film industry (sometimes called Tollywood
)is based in Andhra Pradesh's capital city, Hyderabad.
The Malayalam film industry is based in Kerala.

The Bollywood industry is usually the largest in terms of films produced and box office receipts. Many workers in other regional industries, once their talent and popularity is established, move on to work in other film industries, nationally as well as internationally. For example, A.R. Rahman, one of the best known film music composers in Indian cinema, started his career in Tamil cinema in Chennai but has since undertaken ventures in other spheres, including international film and theatre. Similarly, films that succeed in one language are often remade or dubbed in others. Films like Padosan and Roja
, for example, were re-made or dubbed from their original Bengali and Tamil versions respectively, into Hindi.

Conventions of commercial films

The principal difference between American and Indian commercial cinema, is that Indian film usually feature periodic song-and-dance routines, which, in a good movie, are expected to move the story forward (in mediocre movies, they are poorly integrated into the story). Songs are sung by professional play-back singers and lip-synched by dancing actors and actresses.

Indian commercial films, in whatever regional center they are made, tend to be long; they are usually two to three hours, with an intermission. They tend to be melodramatic and sentimental, but may also feature romance, comedy, action, suspense, and other generic elements.

Art cinema

In addition to commercial cinema, there is also Indian cinema that aspires to seriousness or art. This is known to film critics as "New Indian Cinema" or sometimes "the Indian New Wave" (see the Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema), but most people in India simply call such films "art films".

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the art film was usually government-subsidised: aspiring directors could get federal or state government grants to produce non-commercial films on Indian themes. Many of these directors were graduates of the government-supported Film and Television Institute of India. Their films were showcased at government film festivals and on the government-run TV station, Doordarshan. These films also had limited runs in art house theatres in India and overseas. Since the 1980s, Indian art cinema has to a great extent lost its government patronage. Today, it must be made as independent films on a shoestring budget by aspiring auteurs, much as in today's Western film industry.

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