Movies - Kollywood

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	Movies - Kollywood

Kollywood is a name often applied to Tamil Cinema, based in Chennai (formerly Madras) in the state of Tamil Nadu in south India. The name is a conflation of Kodambakkam and Hollywood. Kodambakkam is an area in Chennai, in and around which there is a high concentration of film studios, and where many people involved with Tamil cinema live.

Kollywood is the thrid major film-making industry in India after Bollywood and Tollywood. Kollywood witnessed three new releases on average every week in 2005 and annual turnover of over Rs.2,100 crore ($460 million) on ticket sales of 70 crores. Tamil cinema has the widest distribution after Hindi cinema, it has enjoyed consistent popularity among Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and other South East Asian countries. Tamil-language films have recently become popular in Japan, South Africa and UK and Canada. Many successful Tamil films have been copied by other film industries like Bollywood.

Tamil films have also been dubbed into other languages, thus reaching a much wider audience. Examples of those dubbed into Hindi include such hits as Minsaara Kanavu
, Roja
and Bombay
. Anniyan
, a recent Tamil film became the first Indian film to be dubbed into French.

There has been a growing presence of English in dialogues and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see movies which feature dialogues studded with English words and phrases, or even whole sentences. Some movies are also simultaneously made in two or three languages (either using subtitles, or several soundtracks). Quite often, Kollywood movies feature Madras Bashai which is the version of Tamil spoken in Madras.

Kollywood and politicians

The Tamil film industry has a long intertwining link with creating future politicians. The first non congress Chief minister C. N. Annadurai and the current opposition leader M. Karunanidhi wrote cine scripts. Long time Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran (MGR) was a well known actor in Kollywood. The current chief minister J. Jayalalithaa was also a popular actress. Moreover many in the field are currently in houses of parliament or assembly, while future aspirants are ready to take wing.

In fact, only one chief minister of Tamil Nadu has no connection to movies.

Personalities

Actors

This is just a list of a few prominent actors in Kollywood. Please check the complete list at Indian Male Actors

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Kollywood ]

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