31 thoughts on “Geography of Popular Culture 2017 – Blog #4”
The massive and expansive Indian film industry of today had a humble beginning in 1896 when the Lumiere brothers of France were the first to bring film to India. They invented the cinematograph and created short, silent films of one or two minutes. The first movie by an Indian film maker came just a year later when Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatvadekar, better known as Save Dada, imported a Cine-camera from London and captured a wrestling match in Mumbai’s Hanging Gardens. He was also considered the first person to film Indian news when he filmed the return to India of RP Paranjpe, an acclaimed mathematics student, from Cambridge. While there were many short, silent Indian movies produced, most of the early cinema seen in India was brought to India from foreigners or created with the assistance of foreigners or foreign technology.
Although the majority of the film watched in India through the early 1900s was foreign film, the influx of foreign cinema was crucial to the rise of Indian cinema. It provided exposure and experience to those individuals who would become important to the rise and expansion of Indian film. One of these individuals was Dadasaheb Phalke, who created the first feature length silent film, Raja Harishchandra, without any foreign collaboration in 1913. Although the movie was produced in India, Phalke used foreign technology to produce it. It was not until 1931 that the first full length film with spoken dialogue, a talkie, was created in India. Ardeshir Irani produced Alam Ara in Hindustani, one of the many languages spoken in India. The 1930s saw a rise in music in Indian film with the release of several musicals, which marked the beginning of the many Indian musical productions to come. Music quickly became a very important aspect of Indian film, and it eventually became a huge contributor to the Indian music industry.
Some of the early themes in Indian film included mythology and historical epics because directors knew these types of movies could sell in India. The stories and retellings of Indian gods and mythological events were a vital part of Indian culture, which in turn led to the success of these types of movies. Indian film soon transitioned to social and domestic genres and then to films with more realistic and hard-hitting social themes often referred to as Parallel Cinema, which emerged in the Golden Age of Indian cinema.
Because there are many different languages spoken in India, Indian films are produced in more than 20 different languages. The Indian film industry was the first to perfect dubbing because of the language barriers. Many films are dubbed in different languages, and they also provide many more languages through subtitles. This is partly because of the variety of Indian languages, but it mostly is attributed to the fact that many Indian films are produced and exported. While millions of Indians watch Indian films, millions of people all over the world also consume Indian film. The language variation in India also led to the creation of regional film markets. The most prominent of these regional markets is Bollywood, or the Hindi language film industry in Bombay.
Today, the Indian film industry is the largest producer of films. In 2016, there were 1,600 Indian films produced that generated 1.9 billion dollars in revenue. Also in 2016, 2.2 billion movie tickets were sold, making India the leading film market in the world.
India’s film industry has expanded exponentially from its conception at the turn of the 20th century. Like many international cinema industries, India was first introduced to film by Lumière and Robert Paul’s motion picture which diffused from London to Bombay, Maharashtra, India in 1896. The idea of cinema production in general and the tools necessary to produce film arrived to India shortly after. By 1899, India’s Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar filmed the very first Indian documentary The Wrestlers which featured a wrestling match in Bombay’s Hanging Gardens. Next, India released a barrage of silent films. The first being Ramchandra Gopal “Dadasaheb” Torne’s Shree Pundalik released in 1912. However, some historians do not recognize this as the first Indian film due to the fact that the cameraman was British, and the film itself was processed in London. Many accept Dhundiraj Govind Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra (1913) as the first Indian film. It was a silent production and only one copy of the film was produced. The film was labeled as a success and made it possible for the industry to further develop in India.
In 1902, Jamshedji Framji Madan opened Madan Theatre Company which grew to acquire other theaters and worked to produce silent films in multiple languages such as Marathi and Tamil. Language barriers within India were an astronomical obstacle in the development of the film industry. Different regions of the country speak different languages or had variations of a certain language. For that reason, India would become skilled in the art of dubbing in order to reach their intended audience in their preferred language. Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu further expanded the Indian film industry by introducing it to other regions of the country. He built theaters throughout India and promoted the art of film making. Shortly after this intanational expansion, sound was incorporated into the cinema industry and the business was changed forever.
In 1931, Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani released Alam Ara which was the first Indian talkie which is basically a film with no recorded dialogue but contains an accompanying musical soundtrack. Actors and singers could earn a comfortable living performing roles in talkies which is probably the reason why Indian musicals are still incredibly popular today. If there is money to be made in something, then it tends to become popular culture. Following World War II, Masala Films became increasingly popular in India. Masala Films are productions which mix genres and utilize music in order to captivate an audience for commercial purposes. After that, the Indian film industry was integrated into politics and was used as a form of propaganda. In 1948, the Indian government created the Films Division of India (FDI) which produced over 200 documentaries in 18 languages and distributed them across India. FDI established the Indian government’s legitimacy and eventually became the biggest producer of documentaries in the world.
Finally, the Indian film industry reached its self-proclaimed Golden Age around the late 1940’s when India gained their independence, and it lasted throughout the 1960’s. During this time period, the quality of films and the number of films produced annually in India increased drastically. Nearly a fourth of the films produced during this era were part of the Parallel Cinema Movement. This movement of Indian films focused on social realism, and some were insanely successful winning awards at international film festivals such as the Apu Trilogy (1955-1959). One of the biggest contributions to the international film industry came during the production of the second part of the Apu Trilogy when Indian cinematographer Satyajit Ray introduced bounce lighting. This technique allowed filmmakers to simulate different levels of daylight while filming. Also during the Indian film Golden Age, actors and actresses grew in popularity and some even reached stardom where they were recognized in both India and internationally. Further, some of the films produced in this time period such as the previously mentioned Apu Trilogy became known as some of the best international films of all time.
From the Indian film Golden Age, the industry has only grown. Today, India has the largest film industry in the world producing over 1,600 films a year and generating a revenue of over $2 billion annually. The business is so big now, that the city at which the Indian cinema industry is based out of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) has been nicknamed Bollywood which is a combination of the United States’ Hollywood and the city Bombay.
Works Cited
Wikipedia contributors. “Cinema of India.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Nov. 2017. Web. 20 Nov. 2017.
The Indian film industry, known as Bollywood, is the largest film industry in the world. In 2016, India produced over fifteen hundred feature films from nearly one thousand production companies, with the major studios located in Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. These films produced in India make their way to ninety markets across the world, selling nearly 4 billion tickets a year and producing a revenue of over two billion dollars a year. But how did the Indian industry come to be a global enterprise?
Some sources say that the first feature film released in India was Pundalik which was shown at the Coronation Cinematograph in Mumbai in 1912. However, there are some that argue that the very first full length motion picture was Raja Harishchandra, produced by Dadasaheb Phalke in 1913, a year later. Both were silent films which, because of their success, led the way for more films like them to be produced. During this period of early cinema, film in India gained popularity because tickets were made available at a low enough price that even the common people could afford to go to cinema hall. The content in these films were made to appeal to the Indian masses, so the producers created films with Indian culture and social life. In the early 1931’s, India saw the introduction of sound films with the release of Alam Ara. With sound cinema and India’s vast number of native languages, there was a necessity for the movies to be made in many languages. In the beginning, produces attempted to solve this problem through the use of multi-lingual filming, a process in which a movie is filmed by the same studio at one time but with different shots of the same scene in different languages. Many times, they used different actors who spoke different languages, but this process was found to be very expensive and cumbersome. This led to the development of dubbing movies into many languages instead. Because these movies made in India were dubbed into many languages, the market for their films continued to grow.
The content of early Indian films was mostly comprised of historical and Sanskrit epics. Influenced by the popularity of musicals produced in Hollywood, India saw the introduction of musicals in its industry. Following the musicals, the parallel cinema movement began which alternatively rejected dance and song routines and instead focused on realism and the social and political climate of India. These films portrayed social themes of the working-class India population. During this time, India was the emergence of “big-time” movie stars. With India’s exportation of their films to other markets like the Soviet Union, the middle east, and eastern Europe to name a few, and India’s presence in international film festivals, Indian films gained international fame. Their worldwide fame has allowed for their one thousand production companies to arise and for their movies to reach viewers across the globe. India is even home the largest (in terms of land area) film studio in the world with the Ramoji Film Studio stretching two thousand acres. It is a popular tourist attraction bringing in around one and a half million tourists a year. Since the first Indian film was produced in 1912, India has come to dominate the world’s film industry.
A Westerner’s exposure to the film industry in India has more than likely been to Bollywood, the lavish melodramatic style of Hindi language film productions that originated from Mumbai (named Bombay prior to 1995). Bollywood is a term that combines Bombay and Hollywood, associating the two largest film industries by name. Bollywood is not the only Indian movie industry but it does produce the most films and has been more widely distributed internationally than the other industries. The history of India’s film industry is intertwined with the development of Bollywood, the country’s infrastructure for film viewing and distribution, and the narratives and genres developed for regional markets.
The Bollywood film industry began in 1913 with Raja Harishchandra and has contributed to the prolific production of Indian full-feature films. Throughout every decade since, India has produced in total more feature films than any other country, including the United States Hollywood industry. For example, in 2012 India produced 1,602 films with 2.6 billion tickets sold compared to 476 full feature films in the U.S. with only 1.36 billion tickets sold. However, in that same year, Hollywood box office revenue was $10.8 billion compared to the entire Indian film industry’s 1.6 billion. Yearly gross revenues of Bollywood and Indian films do not typically earn more than Hollywood films but there are more box office tickets sold for Indian films.
There are several factors that cause the disparity in Indian film revenue. Evaluations of the disparity claim that some reasons include: lower screen to person ratio than the U.S., single screen venues, fractured film industry, low ticket prices, high entertainment taxes, and government supported piracy. These issues cause India’s film industry to not reach the same operating potential that it could have while the most despairing differences could be remedied with government action (reevaluating entertainment taxes and enforcing piracy laws).
Although Bollywood only consists of 20 percent of India’s total film production, it is the most widely distributed and therefore has created common archetypes associated with Indian film. It has also developed over time to include filming or dubbing in different languages (over 20) so the regional and global reach has been more expansive than other Indian film industries. “Bollywood” has thus developed into a global reference of a certain style of film including elaborate songs, dances, and fantastical romantic stories. This form of Indian popular culture has even influenced the Hollywood industry to reinvest in musicals in recent years. The Indian film industry will continue to have to negotiate internal completion and regional and global demands to garner further revenues and exposure for underrepresented genres.
Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire by Vijay Mishra
Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/09/03/bollywood-indias-film-industry-by-the-numbers-infographic/#18d3cc5b2488 https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2015/10/23/indias-film-industry-a-10-billion-business-trapped-in-a-2-billion-body/#262771fe70d2
A Westerner’s exposure to the film industry in India has more than likely been to Bollywood, the lavish melodramatic style of Hindi language film productions that originated from Mumbai (named Bombay prior to 1995). Bollywood is a term that combines Bombay and Hollywood, associating the two largest film industries by name. Bollywood is not the only Indian movie industry but it does produce the most films and has been more widely distributed internationally than the other industries. The history of India’s film industry is intertwined with the development of Bollywood, the country’s infrastructure for film viewing and distribution, and the narratives and genres developed for regional markets.
The Bollywood film industry began in 1913 with Raja Harishchandra and has contributed to the prolific production of Indian full-feature films. Throughout every decade since, India has produced in total more feature films than any other country, including the United States Hollywood industry. For example, in 2012 India produced 1,602 films with 2.6 billion tickets sold compared to 476 full feature films in the U.S. with only 1.36 billion tickets sold. However, in that same year, Hollywood box office revenue was $10.8 billion compared to the entire Indian film industry’s 1.6 billion. Yearly gross revenues of Bollywood and Indian films do not typically earn more than Hollywood films but there are more box office tickets sold for Indian films.
There are several factors that cause the disparity in Indian film revenue. Evaluations of the disparity claim that some reasons include: lower screen to person ratio than the U.S., single screen venues, fractured film industry, low ticket prices, high entertainment taxes, and government supported piracy. These issues cause India’s film industry to not reach the same operating potential that it could have while the most despairing differences could be remedied with government action (reevaluating entertainment taxes and enforcing piracy laws).
Although Bollywood only consists of 20 percent of India’s total film production, it is the most widely distributed and therefore has created common archetypes associated with Indian film. It has also developed over time to include filming or dubbing in different languages (over 20) so the regional and global reach has been more expansive than other Indian film industries. “Bollywood” has thus developed into a global reference of a certain style of film including elaborate songs, dances, and fantastical romantic stories. This form of Indian popular culture has even influenced the Hollywood industry to reinvest in musicals in recent years. The Indian film industry will continue to have to negotiate internal completion and regional and global demands to garner further revenues and exposure for underrepresented genres.
Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire by Vijay Mishra
Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/09/03/bollywood-indias-film-industry-by-the-numbers-infographic/#18d3cc5b2488 https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2015/10/23/indias-film-industry-a-10-billion-business-trapped-in-a-2-billion-body/#262771fe70d2
Despite many peoples preconceived notions about the dominance of Hollywood, modern India actually houses the largest film industry in the world. Film was first introduced to the subcontinent when the Lumiere brothers displayed six short films to a zealous audience in Bombay (now known as Mumbai) in 1896. While the term “Bollywood” was not coined until the 1970s, the first Indian film dates back to 1913. Produced by Dadasaheb Phalke, the silent film Raja Harishchandra was the country’s first feature film. Phalke would go on to oversee the production of twenty-three films between 1913-1918. However, Phalke was not met with much success as the industry was still growing out of infancy. Initially, mythology was the source of many films, with tales from classic epics like The Mahabarata and The Ramayana being converted to film.
Production of films would skyrocket after the release of the first talking film Alam Ara in 1931. Surprisingly, Urdu rather than Hindi was the language used in the film directed by Ardeshir Irani. By that year there were 328 production companies, which when compared to 1927’s 108, was a very large jump in a short time. Major studios were created in Madras, Calcutta, Lahore, Bombay, and Pune as the industry continued to grow during the 30s. Britain not only limited the number of films produced, but restricted usage of film stock during World War II as the materials were used for the war effort. Following India’s independence from Britain in 1947, mythological and historical stories began to be replaced by more realistic ones that focused on the lower classes, Indian culture, and social commentary. This brought with it a new wave of filmmakers such as Bimal Roy and Satyajit Ray. Films began to have longer runs than ever before, with Jeevita Nauka becoming the first Indian film to run for more than six months in 1951. This era of post-independence film is typically seen as the golden age of Indian cinema. Following this era was the beginning of many trends that people associate with Bollywood and Indian cinema today. Songs and dances became much more present in the 70s as celebrities used them to build their fame beyond simply acting. Often songs would chart solely based on the performance of the movie they were featured in.
India has a diverse population and is home to dozens of languages. Naturally, this creates not only a language barrier for films but a cultural one as well. What some may think is funny in one language may not necessarily translate humorously into another. To compensate this, India early on became the premier country when it came to subbing and dubbing. The production of movies in all major languages has actually dwindled in the past thirty or so year, but was much more common in the 1970s and 1980s where they were often released in at least six languages. English as a whole was avoided following independence, but as the country’s film industry continues to expand into the 21st century, usage of English is sure to increase as more Americans and English are capable of watching the films.
The history of India’s relationship with film is as old and storied as the industry’s American counterpart. Film found its way into India during the technology’s infancy; it was even delivered to the nation on behalf of the Lumiere brothers who were two of the earliest filmmakers/pioneers. The brothers sent a person named Marius Sestier to screen their short films over the course of a few shows to a British audience. One of the members of the audience, however, was Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar who ordered his own film camera from the UK almost immediately. His first film, a wrestling match held in Mumbai’s Hanging Gardens, was shot in 1899 and not only launched his own career as a pioneer filmmaker but launched the Indian film industry. Bhatavdekar also purchased a projector and would screen foreign films along with his own. Sadly, over 99% of the silent films produced at this time by Bhatavdekar and his contemporaries have been lost to time and tragedy.
Apart from Bhatavdekar and his production of early short films, the first film considered to be wholly Indian was 1913’s Raja Harishchandra, a story of the Hindu gods produced by the “father of Indian cinema” Dadasaheb Phalke. Phalke had gained the inspiration for the film while watching a silent film about the life of Christ and desiring to create his own celebration of religion. It was marketed as the “First film of Indian manufacture. Specially prepared at enormous cost… Sure to appeal to our Hindu patrons.” Unfortunately, it is difficult to ascertain just how much this film meant to the native people of India at the time because the press medias in the country at the time were largely ran by colonial English powers and cared little for the landmarks of the Indian film industry. Following India’s independence from these colonial rulers, the Indian film industry experienced a boom and the period from 1944-1960 is considered by film historians as the “Golden Age” of Indian cinema. Indian films began to receive international acclaim during this period including films like “Mother India” receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957 and “Neecha Nagar” receiving the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the very first Cannes film festival in 1946.
In modern cinema, India has grown to be the largest film-producing country in the world by a large margin. The United States, for example, only produces around 65% of the total number of films that India produces per year. The Hindi-language film industry is primarily based in Mumbai and has developed a few different nicknames such as “HiFi,” Hindi Cinema, or, as most Americans refer to it, Bollywood. Every day, more than 20 million Indians go the cinema to see Indian-produced films. While the yearly box office returns in India account for around $5.9 billion (a little more than half of the U.S. box office totals), the country leads the world in the number of cinema admissions. In 2016, around 1.3 billion cinema tickets were sold in the United States compared to the astronomical amount sold in India which was just under 10 billion. Just like the early days of the industry established, Bollywood films are intricately attached to native Indian culture and identity.
India’s film industry, commonly known as “Bollywood,” has expanded greatly from it’s humble beginnings. The first feature film made in India was 1912’s silent film Pundalik. By 1931, Bollywood was making less than two hundred sound films a year, but had perfected the art of dubbing to serve the wide number of languages in India. AVM is the oldest production studio in India, having their first successes in the 1940s. After India won it’s war for independence to the to the 1960s are considered Bollywood’s “Golden Age.”
Bollywood has a variety of film genres. One of the main genres is historical epics that come from Mahabra and Sanskrit epic tales. Another popular genre is musicals. Hollywood’s musicals of the 1950s greatly influenced Bollywood, leading to many of Bollywood’s musicals to have a similar style and feel to these musicals. This revival in Bollywood has helped create the current musical revival in the United States with films such as La La Land. Another popular genre is the thriller genre. Bollywood thrillers have been greatly influenced by the Hong Kong film industry. Some of these thrillers have also looked to Shakespeare’s plays. Films such as Maqbool (Macbeth), Omkara (Othello), and Haider (Hamlet) all fall into this category and have done well. For example, after receiving much critical acclaim, Haider won the People’s Choice Award at the Rome Film Festival.
Success of Bollywood films indicate how Bollywood has become a hugely popular industry. In fact one of the richest actors on the planet is an Indian actor named Shah Rukh Khan. Khan is a actor, producer and television personality known to be the “King of Bollywood” and also commonly nicknamed “King Khan”. Mr. Khan’s net worth is 600 million which beats out Tom Cruise by a whopping 120 million placing him 2nd only to Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David (both creators of the Seinfeld show). Bollywood comes no where near to Hollywood in terms of highest grossing films. However, in terms of total films produced a year Bollywood is top in the world. In 2016 alone, the Indian film industry produced 1,600 films, making it the largest producer of that year. To show the difference in scale, in 2016 the United States produced 980 films. That’s only a little over half of how many films were produced in India that year. Moreover, India made 1,602 feature films in 2013 that grossed $1.86 billion from over 90 markets. These high profits are driven by production companies. In India, there are around 1,000 production companies. Only a little over sixty of these production companies end up being successful, but the number of companies is staggering. More than 50% of the production companies are locating in Mumbai. However, the largest film studio, which is in India, is not in Mumbai. Located in Hyperbad, Ramjoi Film City stretches over 2,000 acres. It’s size speaks to the scale of the Indian film industry.
Part of what makes India’s film industry so successful is their perfection of dubbing. Films are usually made in twenty-one different languages. This wide variety in dubbing and sub-titling allows the industry to have a broad reach. Indian films are a important part of the Southeast Asian and East Asian box office. Another aspect that makes India’s film industry so successful is the musical revival in Bollywood. This musical revival makes the Indian film industry important for the Indian music industry. Music averages to be four to five percent of a film’s revenue, while forty-eight percent of India’s music revenue comes from music in films.
The Indian film industry has its roots in the advancements to the cinematograph made by the Lumiere Brothers at the end of the nineteenth century. Impressed by the technology’s exhibition in Bombay in 1896, two Indian photographers, Hiralal Sen and H. S. Bhatavdeker, became the first Indian filmmakers with the The Flowers of Persia and The Wrestlers respectively. From these humble, silent-era beginnings has grown the largest and most productive film market in the world. A particularly unique character of the Indian film industry is its domination of the domestic market, successfully staving off western cultural domination in ways that other regional markets have not.
By the 1930s, there were several major film production studios operating in the region, such as Bombay Talkies, Prabhat Film Company, and the New Theaters in Calcutta. The broadening of production and availability of films for the Indian market helped drive the expansion of the industry into the “Golden Age of Indian Cinema” of the 1950s. During this Golden Age Hindi films and filmmakers rose to greater prominence, with crime-dramas, historical epics and films that dealt with social themes and interests. This Hindi film industry, which has come to be known as Bollywood, is now the largest and most important contingent of the Indian film industry.
The Indian film industry is intrinsically linked with the music industry in the country. There is a unique interdependence between the two industries as some 85 percent of music revenue in India came from films. Most productions utilize purpose-made compositions, and many heavily feature music and dance numbers. Indeed, many popular Indian actors and actresses are also accomplished singers and dancers.
In 2001, India finally declared cinema an industry, opening the floodgates for modernization, corporatization, and a great deal of capital. This development has led to a greater proliferation of movie theaters in more remote areas. Multi-screened theaters and more available funding for developers has enabled more experimentation with film structure, themes, and topics that are more rarely touched upon in mainstream cinema. In recent decades, films have explored such issues as homosexuality, HIV, religious fundamentalism and nationalism. The modern Indian film industry has become, not only the largest film industry in the world, but also one of the most introspective and interesting.
The Indian film industry, Bollywood, grew into success differently than most others of its kind. Our own film industry produces films that are not necessarily intended to be viewed out of our own western market. The languages available on our movies is limited to English with maybe Spanish and French subtitles. In India, however, they started in the early twentieth century producing about 200 films per year, and dubbing the films they were producing. The films would usually be originally recorded in Hindi and would then get dubbed in the eighteen primary languages in India as well as English.
Bollywood films used to be produced in a very unique way where they would shoot doing multilingual filming process. The actors would shoot the same scene multiple times in multiple languages so that dubbing wouldn’t have to occur. This became very expensive and cumbersome with variable quality being created. Companies then moved to dubbing and using voice actors for this so that the original actors voice could be replicated in the many different languages provided. The Indian film industry has always marketed their movies to be able to go into international markets, and considering probably more than half of the world is watching dubbed or subtitled films anyway, this is a very smart business move.
By 2013 the Indian film industry expanded to be producing more than 1,600 films, per year and bringing in around 1.68 billion dollars in box-office sales. They are featuring 1st run films in 90 market countries with films made in twenty-one different languages that have been dubbed or subtitled. Bollywood films have significant influence in Southeast and East Asian markets as there is a large disparate population in those areas as well as in East Europe and the Middle East. When the USSR was still in power, they were India’s first international market. Bollywood films would be at the top of that market because they were not as dark or depressing as the USSR films could be.
Bollywood has the standard genres that most film industries have, but with regional flavors of each. They create historical epics, musicals influenced by Hollywood, action/crime/thriller films that have some Hong Kong influence, and new contemporary films called Parallel films that are art and indie type features. Some of the most popular films are crime films that have been based of Shakespeare’s plays.
In Bollywood, the actors are usually seen as the “triple threat” where they can sing, dance, and act. They are often also pop stars in the country. This is not surprising considering how closely tied the film and music industry is in India. 48% of music receipts are coming from the film industry, and 4-5% of the revenue is coming from music that is originally composed for the movies.
The Indian film industry continues to grow and be successful. In 2016, India produced 1,600 feature films that were 80 minutes or longer and not documentary dwarfing Nigeria (1,100), the United States (980), and China (700). They smartly stared by marketing their films for international intent, and continue to make popular films today.
As little as fifteen years ago, most Americans could recognize the term “Bollywood,” but the majority of people haven’t even seen a Bollywood film or can name a famous Indian actor or actress. This has changed within the recent years with more and more Indian actors and actresses crossing over from Bollywood to Hollywood and big-budget Bollywood films gaining popularity and notoriety here in the United States. The Indian film industry, with its’ most known attraction Bollywood, has grown exponentially since its’ beginning to become the largest film industry in the world. It is a preconceived notion here in the West that Hollywood dominates, but that isn’t the fact. The Indian film industry produces more than 1,000 films every year and the box office totals around $5.9 billion. With the two-part film “Randamoozham” being set to release in 2020, and with a budget at $155 million (US dollars) the makers of this film are hoping it will reach global fame. Although the budget might not seem groundbreaking compared to Hollywood standards, this is monumental to India. They also intend to incorporate not only big names from Bollywood, but Hollywood as well.
The Indian film industry started off when Dadasaheb Phalke, also know as the “Father of Indian Cinema,” produced “Raja Harishchandra” which is now regarded as the first full-length Indian feature film in 1913, which was a silent film. He went on to manage the production of twenty-three other Indian films from 1913 to 1918. The first Indian film to have sound in it was “Alam Ara” in 1931. This film was the marker for a new age in Indian cinema; there was a huge growth in movie as well as audience size. These early films of the Indian cinema were more focused on mythological and historical tales, but this changed after World War 2. Movies started focusing on the lower class and their hardships with reputable directors like Bimal Roy and Satyajit Ray taking the lead. This trend continued into the 1960s, in which during this time notable actors like Raj Kappor and Dev Anand emerging. In the 1970s Masala movies were essential in Bollywood. Masala is the type of movie that many Bollywood movies are by combining many different genres into one film. The 1980s brought women directors to the forefront of the Bollywood, and in the 1990s a new generation of actors and actresses that brought new techniques and updated performances. One of the most recognizable milestones by the West in Indian cinema is when A.R. Rahman won two academy awards for the soundtrack in “Slumdog Millionaire” which became a huge success worldwide. The main stars in “Slumdog Millionaire” Dev Patel and Freida Pinto have gone on to have massive success in Hollywood, paving the way for more crossover actors and actresses for the future. Music is a huge part of the Bollywood scene and an integral part of its’ films. Intricate choreographed musical numbers are renowned throughout the global industry for their artistry.
Bollywood is now emerging on a global scale and with a growing audience. With more and more attention being paid to the Indian film industry, there is more foreign interest (money) in the producing of Indian films. With foreign interest now directly aimed at Bollywood, films are hoping to breakthrough the international barriers both culturally and language wise. It is only a matter of time before the Indian film industry finds massive success overseas.
The Indian film industry has its roots all the way back in the nineteenth century. It was in 1896 that the French film pioneer Lumiere Brother’s films were first shown in Mumbai. After having seen the Lumiere Brother’s films, a still photographer by the name of Save Dada decided that he wanted to follow in their footsteps. He ordered a camera from England and recorded his first movie, ‘The Wrestlers’. The movie was simply a recording of a wrestling match that was shown in 1899, yet it became the first motion picture of the Indian film industry.
Despite its popularity today, the Indian film industry did not enjoy the early success that Hollywood did. A man named Dadasaheb Phalke, affectionately known as the Father of Indian Cinema, made the first full-length feature film, a silent film called Raja Harishchandra, in 1913. This film was a commercial success, but the industry did not see much sustained growth until the 1930s with the introduction of ‘Talkies’. A Talkie is simply a film with sound. The first of these films was released in Bombay in 1931 and was called ‘Alam Ara’. This ushered in a new era of Indian cinema. Several new production companies made way for a large increase in the number of films being released. The number of films released nearly tripled from 1931 compared to 1927.
After a decline due to World War II, the modern Indian film industry took full bloom. During this time, the focus of films shifted from historical and mythical subjects and began to focus on pressing social issues. Films by popular filmmakers Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy made films that focused on the sufferings of the lower class. Indian films began to develop an international presence during what is considered to be the golden age of Indian cinema in the 1950s and the 1960s. One distinctive characteristic that separated Indian movies from other international films was the importance of songs.
Masala movies became popular in Bollywood in the 1970s. Masala movies were movies that freely mixed genres, oftentimes incorporating musicals. These movies were a bit of a break from the previous films that focused on difficult issues. Masala movies gave the audience an escape from their misery and everyday struggles. The most well-known Masala movie globally has to be ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, which opened in 2008 to widespread critical success. Despite being directed and produced by the British, the film still starred Indian actors and featured music by popular Indian composer A. R. Rahman. The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and took home 8 of them, including Best Picture. However, the film stirred up controversy. Many on the inside of the Indian film industry saw ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ as a portrayal of how the West saw Indian poverty and claimed that it was not an accurate portrayal of the country. Acclaimed Indian filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan even went as far as to call the film “a very anti-Indian film.” As Bollywood has become more popular globally, this is a problem that the industry will face as Western film companies may attempt to capitalize on that popularity.
Sources: https://www.mapsofindia.com/my-india/history/history-of-indian-cinema
India’s film industry has a rich history that has allowed it to become the largest film industry in the world. The Indian film industry got its start back in 1896 when the Lumiere Brothers’ Cinematograph first came to Bombay to show some silent short films, and it captured India’s attention. By 1899, Harishchandra Bhatvadekar had recorded a wrestling match in Bombay’s Hanging Gardens using similar equipment, but it was not until 1913 that the public viewed a full length Indian film, Rajah Harishandra. The film was directed by Dadasaheb Phalke who is viewed as a pioneer of the film industry for his knowledge on India’s language and culture. Phalke created a trend that set the industry in motion. Several silent films were created, and with low ticket pricing they gained a growing audience. Next in 1931 India’s first talkie, Alam Ara, was produced by Ardeshir Irani. It was a costume drama that used many characters and film songs that helped solidify India’s use of song and dance in many of its movies. Alam Ara about many talking films, with most coming in various languages since there are many languages spoken in India. The multi-language films gave rise to dubbing technology that allows films to be heard in 21 different languages.
The rise in talking films created narratives that related to India’s history and to mythological texts. Indian epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana influenced popular Indian cinema. Stories relating to mythology gods and goddesses were also a huge sensation that has led to a lot success. Historical films were prevalent as Indians put nationalist tones in their movies to show their desire of independence from British rule. In 1947 India gained independence, which started the Golden Age in their film industry until about the 1960s. During the Golden Age, the quality and the quantity of films greatly increased. These films had themes of hard-hitting social realism that were often called Parallel Cinema. The Golden Age also brought advanced technology that helped create even more significant film scores. Today music in Indian films now rakes in about 4-5% of film revenue and 48% of all Indian music revenue.
Since the Golden Age, the Indian film industry has only gotten bigger. Dramatic musicals are still very popular with influence coming from Hollywood, as well action/crime movies with influences from Hong Kong’s film industry. Today there are over 1000 production companies that all try to make Indian films global hits. In 2013, India sold over 2 billion movie tickets, and generated 1.9 billion dollars in film revenue. The Indian film industry has expanded and now reaches 90 global markets, which are a major source of revenue. Indian cinema has also been recognized at he Academy Awards on several occasions for being nominated for Best Foreign Language film. Netflix has now entered India showing where the next direction that the Indian film industry can focus on if it sees promise. Nonetheless, the Indian film industry has come along way since the break through of its first full-length film in 1913.
The beginnings of the Indian film industry mirror that of other global film industries, advancement in camera equipment made by the Lumiere brothers. India like the rest of the world was amazed by the Lumiere brothers’ films, and sought to replicate these moving pictures in Bombay. With the interest to produced film sparked, hopeful Indian cinematographers began importing cameras from the United Kingdom. A wrestling match at the Hanging Gardens in Bombay, filmed by Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar, was the first film captured and produced by an Indian cinematographer. Bhatavdekar continued to document Indian life through the medium of silent film through the early 1900s. Unfortunately, the majority of early Indian silent films have been lost.
The 1920s saw India beginning to import Hollywood films en masse. Indian audiences were captivated by American action films, and Indian film-makers noticed. While the Indian film industry’s beginnings were rooted in religious epics and historical pieces, the 1940s saw an increase in Indian produced dramatic and action films. Throughout this period of time, the industry saw a consistent increase in ticket sales each year, a large demographic of which was the working class. From the 1940s through the 1960s International audiences began to take note of Indian produced films. Indian films began to accrue critical acclaim throughout this period as well; the 1957 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was awarded to an Indian produced film, “Mother India”. This time-period is often referred to as the “Golden Age” of the Indian film industry.
Indian culture, history, and demographics are greatly reflected in Bollywood movies. India is a diverse country with 880 languages (31 official) spoken. This linguistic diversity has directly effected the production of Indian films and innovation in dubbing technology. India’s distinct style of music, dance, and architecture as well as its diverse religious communities have also had a real impact on the Indian film industry, specifically the Hindi film industry, Bollywood. Unlike Hollywood, Bollywood is not a physical location. Bollywood production centers around Mumbai, India and is the largest producer of films within the modern Indian film industry.
The modern India film industry has grown far beyond its origins. Following the stagnation of Indian film production in the late 1980s, was a resurgence of production. This period, beginning in the 1990s and extending to present production, is often referred to as “New Bollywood”. The 2000s marked an increase in global Bollywood recognition. This popularity paired with the booming growth of India’s economy led to a massive growth in film production. India surpassed the United States to become the largest film-producing country in the 1970s. Ticket sales have also rapidly expanded. Annual Indian box office returns still trail the United States at $5.9 billion, however the country is a global leader in the number of tickets sold. The most recent data notes that 10 billion movie tickets were sold in India almost ten times that of the tickets sold in the United States.
Like the American film industry, the Indian film industry began with silent films. The first film ever produced by the Indian film industry was Pundalik in 1912, and the first feature film was Raja Harishchandra in 1913. This story followed tales from the Sanskrit epics, and the female parts were played by male actors. The Indian film industry first produced a film with sound (or a ‘talkie’) in 1931, and the Indian film industry has come a very long way from these first few films. Today, they make more than two hundred films per year, and many of them are dubbed into multiple different languages. This is because there are many other languages spoken in India than just Hindi, so dubbing is necessary to reach the largest audience possible. The films today are dubbed or have subtitles added for twenty one different languages.
As the middle class has grown in India, so has the Indian film industry. Tickets to see a movie at the theater cost a relatively small amount of money, so people are willing and able to go more often. In 2016, the Asia and Pacific box office made $14.6 billion, which is massive compared to the United States box office, which made $11.4 billion. Also in 2016, the Indian film industry produced approximately 1600 feature films which sold in ninety different markets and made $1.87 billion, making them a major influence in the Asia and Pacific box office.
The Indian film industry’s first big international market was Soviet Russia, but their films are also popular in countries located in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The most widely known genre might be the typical Bollywood musical, but the Indian film industry actually has a just as varied number of genres as we do here in the United States. The Indian film industry produces historical epics, such as Mahabarata and Sanskrit epics, action, crime, and thrillers, such as Maqbool, Omkara, and Haider. These three feature films are Indian versions of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet, but many action, crime, and thriller movies produced by the Indian film industry were influenced by Alfred Hitchcock films. Another example of foreign influence on the Indian film industry are the previously mentioned Bollywood films. These Bollywood films are influenced by the classic musicals that the United State’s film industry previously produced.
The Indian film industry has over one thousand film production companies currently. AVM Productions is the largest surviving film company in India, and the Ramoji Film City is the largest film studio in the entire world. It is located in Hyderabad, India, on roughly two thousand acres of land. Over fifty percent of the total one thousand film production companies are located in Mumbai, as is the headquarters of Bollywood. Music is also very important to the Indian film industry. Sale of film soundtracks is between four to five percent of film revenue, but it is forty eight percent of all the Indian music revenue.
The Indian film industry has gone from being a small essentially hobby, with only silent films, to being a massive industry with large box office sales, many genres, and many different languages available.
The story of the Indian film industry begins in 1896 when the Lumiere brothers from France when they brought film technology to the country for the first time. The first Indian film was then created in 1912, followed by their first feature film in 1913, Raja Harischandra. The next major leap in Indian film production would be almost twenty years later with the production of their first film with sound in 1931. This then evolved into the massively popular Indian film industry of today that produces hundreds of films each year in many different languages to accommodate the global demand for Indian produced films as well as the cultural and lingual diversity in India continues to increase. India is also home to the world’s largest film city, Ramoji Film City, located in Hyderbad, India and the country its self is home to just under one thousand film production companies.
Though the Indian film industry is known best worldwide by its famous Bollywood productions, it has a much more diverse range of genres and styles than most people are aware of. This includes everything from action, comedy, horror, and all other genres that the American film industry has as well. This even includes a series of movies recreating some of Shakespeare’s most famous epics such as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth.
Beginning in 1896 with the introduction of film technology, the Indian film industry has made many incredible advancements in a relatively short time. Leaps in film technology as well as having a nation that loves films unlike any other led to India becoming the film powerhouse that it is today.
All the bairns o' Adam 
The massive and expansive Indian film industry of today had a humble beginning in 1896 when the Lumiere brothers of France were the first to bring film to India. They invented the cinematograph and created short, silent films of one or two minutes. The first movie by an Indian film maker came just a year later when Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatvadekar, better known as Save Dada, imported a Cine-camera from London and captured a wrestling match in Mumbai’s Hanging Gardens. He was also considered the first person to film Indian news when he filmed the return to India of RP Paranjpe, an acclaimed mathematics student, from Cambridge. While there were many short, silent Indian movies produced, most of the early cinema seen in India was brought to India from foreigners or created with the assistance of foreigners or foreign technology.
Although the majority of the film watched in India through the early 1900s was foreign film, the influx of foreign cinema was crucial to the rise of Indian cinema. It provided exposure and experience to those individuals who would become important to the rise and expansion of Indian film. One of these individuals was Dadasaheb Phalke, who created the first feature length silent film, Raja Harishchandra, without any foreign collaboration in 1913. Although the movie was produced in India, Phalke used foreign technology to produce it. It was not until 1931 that the first full length film with spoken dialogue, a talkie, was created in India. Ardeshir Irani produced Alam Ara in Hindustani, one of the many languages spoken in India. The 1930s saw a rise in music in Indian film with the release of several musicals, which marked the beginning of the many Indian musical productions to come. Music quickly became a very important aspect of Indian film, and it eventually became a huge contributor to the Indian music industry.
Some of the early themes in Indian film included mythology and historical epics because directors knew these types of movies could sell in India. The stories and retellings of Indian gods and mythological events were a vital part of Indian culture, which in turn led to the success of these types of movies. Indian film soon transitioned to social and domestic genres and then to films with more realistic and hard-hitting social themes often referred to as Parallel Cinema, which emerged in the Golden Age of Indian cinema.
Because there are many different languages spoken in India, Indian films are produced in more than 20 different languages. The Indian film industry was the first to perfect dubbing because of the language barriers. Many films are dubbed in different languages, and they also provide many more languages through subtitles. This is partly because of the variety of Indian languages, but it mostly is attributed to the fact that many Indian films are produced and exported. While millions of Indians watch Indian films, millions of people all over the world also consume Indian film. The language variation in India also led to the creation of regional film markets. The most prominent of these regional markets is Bollywood, or the Hindi language film industry in Bombay.
Today, the Indian film industry is the largest producer of films. In 2016, there were 1,600 Indian films produced that generated 1.9 billion dollars in revenue. Also in 2016, 2.2 billion movie tickets were sold, making India the leading film market in the world.
Sources:Hutchinson, P. (2013, July 25). The birth of India’s film industry: how the movies came to Mumbai. Retrieved November 18, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jul/25/birth-indias-film-industry-movies- mumbai
A Brief History of Indian Cinema. (n.d.). Retrieved November 18, 2017, from https://www.goldenglobes.com/articles/brief-history-indian-cinema
Indian Film History. (n.d.). Retrieved November 18, 2017, from http://wiki.phalkefactory.net/index.php?title=Indian_Film_History
Kiprop, V. (2017, June 14). Largest Film Industries in the World. Retrieved November 18, 2017, from http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-film-industries-in-the-world.html
Fuller, S. (n.d.). Topic: Film Industry in India. Retrieved November 18, 2017, from https://www.statista.com/topics/2140/film-industry-in-india/
Very nice research
India’s film industry has expanded exponentially from its conception at the turn of the 20th century. Like many international cinema industries, India was first introduced to film by Lumière and Robert Paul’s motion picture which diffused from London to Bombay, Maharashtra, India in 1896. The idea of cinema production in general and the tools necessary to produce film arrived to India shortly after. By 1899, India’s Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar filmed the very first Indian documentary The Wrestlers which featured a wrestling match in Bombay’s Hanging Gardens. Next, India released a barrage of silent films. The first being Ramchandra Gopal “Dadasaheb” Torne’s Shree Pundalik released in 1912. However, some historians do not recognize this as the first Indian film due to the fact that the cameraman was British, and the film itself was processed in London. Many accept Dhundiraj Govind Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra (1913) as the first Indian film. It was a silent production and only one copy of the film was produced. The film was labeled as a success and made it possible for the industry to further develop in India.
In 1902, Jamshedji Framji Madan opened Madan Theatre Company which grew to acquire other theaters and worked to produce silent films in multiple languages such as Marathi and Tamil. Language barriers within India were an astronomical obstacle in the development of the film industry. Different regions of the country speak different languages or had variations of a certain language. For that reason, India would become skilled in the art of dubbing in order to reach their intended audience in their preferred language. Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu further expanded the Indian film industry by introducing it to other regions of the country. He built theaters throughout India and promoted the art of film making. Shortly after this intanational expansion, sound was incorporated into the cinema industry and the business was changed forever.
In 1931, Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani released Alam Ara which was the first Indian talkie which is basically a film with no recorded dialogue but contains an accompanying musical soundtrack. Actors and singers could earn a comfortable living performing roles in talkies which is probably the reason why Indian musicals are still incredibly popular today. If there is money to be made in something, then it tends to become popular culture. Following World War II, Masala Films became increasingly popular in India. Masala Films are productions which mix genres and utilize music in order to captivate an audience for commercial purposes. After that, the Indian film industry was integrated into politics and was used as a form of propaganda. In 1948, the Indian government created the Films Division of India (FDI) which produced over 200 documentaries in 18 languages and distributed them across India. FDI established the Indian government’s legitimacy and eventually became the biggest producer of documentaries in the world.
Finally, the Indian film industry reached its self-proclaimed Golden Age around the late 1940’s when India gained their independence, and it lasted throughout the 1960’s. During this time period, the quality of films and the number of films produced annually in India increased drastically. Nearly a fourth of the films produced during this era were part of the Parallel Cinema Movement. This movement of Indian films focused on social realism, and some were insanely successful winning awards at international film festivals such as the Apu Trilogy (1955-1959). One of the biggest contributions to the international film industry came during the production of the second part of the Apu Trilogy when Indian cinematographer Satyajit Ray introduced bounce lighting. This technique allowed filmmakers to simulate different levels of daylight while filming. Also during the Indian film Golden Age, actors and actresses grew in popularity and some even reached stardom where they were recognized in both India and internationally. Further, some of the films produced in this time period such as the previously mentioned Apu Trilogy became known as some of the best international films of all time.
From the Indian film Golden Age, the industry has only grown. Today, India has the largest film industry in the world producing over 1,600 films a year and generating a revenue of over $2 billion annually. The business is so big now, that the city at which the Indian cinema industry is based out of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) has been nicknamed Bollywood which is a combination of the United States’ Hollywood and the city Bombay.
Works Cited
Wikipedia contributors. “Cinema of India.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Nov. 2017. Web. 20 Nov. 2017.
Excellent
The Indian film industry, known as Bollywood, is the largest film industry in the world. In 2016, India produced over fifteen hundred feature films from nearly one thousand production companies, with the major studios located in Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. These films produced in India make their way to ninety markets across the world, selling nearly 4 billion tickets a year and producing a revenue of over two billion dollars a year. But how did the Indian industry come to be a global enterprise?
Some sources say that the first feature film released in India was Pundalik which was shown at the Coronation Cinematograph in Mumbai in 1912. However, there are some that argue that the very first full length motion picture was Raja Harishchandra, produced by Dadasaheb Phalke in 1913, a year later. Both were silent films which, because of their success, led the way for more films like them to be produced. During this period of early cinema, film in India gained popularity because tickets were made available at a low enough price that even the common people could afford to go to cinema hall. The content in these films were made to appeal to the Indian masses, so the producers created films with Indian culture and social life. In the early 1931’s, India saw the introduction of sound films with the release of Alam Ara. With sound cinema and India’s vast number of native languages, there was a necessity for the movies to be made in many languages. In the beginning, produces attempted to solve this problem through the use of multi-lingual filming, a process in which a movie is filmed by the same studio at one time but with different shots of the same scene in different languages. Many times, they used different actors who spoke different languages, but this process was found to be very expensive and cumbersome. This led to the development of dubbing movies into many languages instead. Because these movies made in India were dubbed into many languages, the market for their films continued to grow.
The content of early Indian films was mostly comprised of historical and Sanskrit epics. Influenced by the popularity of musicals produced in Hollywood, India saw the introduction of musicals in its industry. Following the musicals, the parallel cinema movement began which alternatively rejected dance and song routines and instead focused on realism and the social and political climate of India. These films portrayed social themes of the working-class India population. During this time, India was the emergence of “big-time” movie stars. With India’s exportation of their films to other markets like the Soviet Union, the middle east, and eastern Europe to name a few, and India’s presence in international film festivals, Indian films gained international fame. Their worldwide fame has allowed for their one thousand production companies to arise and for their movies to reach viewers across the globe. India is even home the largest (in terms of land area) film studio in the world with the Ramoji Film Studio stretching two thousand acres. It is a popular tourist attraction bringing in around one and a half million tourists a year. Since the first Indian film was produced in 1912, India has come to dominate the world’s film industry.
Sources:
http://www.culturalindia.net/indian-cinema/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_India#Early_sound_cinema_.281930s.E2.80.93mid-1940s.29
Very nice
A Westerner’s exposure to the film industry in India has more than likely been to Bollywood, the lavish melodramatic style of Hindi language film productions that originated from Mumbai (named Bombay prior to 1995). Bollywood is a term that combines Bombay and Hollywood, associating the two largest film industries by name. Bollywood is not the only Indian movie industry but it does produce the most films and has been more widely distributed internationally than the other industries. The history of India’s film industry is intertwined with the development of Bollywood, the country’s infrastructure for film viewing and distribution, and the narratives and genres developed for regional markets.
The Bollywood film industry began in 1913 with Raja Harishchandra and has contributed to the prolific production of Indian full-feature films. Throughout every decade since, India has produced in total more feature films than any other country, including the United States Hollywood industry. For example, in 2012 India produced 1,602 films with 2.6 billion tickets sold compared to 476 full feature films in the U.S. with only 1.36 billion tickets sold. However, in that same year, Hollywood box office revenue was $10.8 billion compared to the entire Indian film industry’s 1.6 billion. Yearly gross revenues of Bollywood and Indian films do not typically earn more than Hollywood films but there are more box office tickets sold for Indian films.
There are several factors that cause the disparity in Indian film revenue. Evaluations of the disparity claim that some reasons include: lower screen to person ratio than the U.S., single screen venues, fractured film industry, low ticket prices, high entertainment taxes, and government supported piracy. These issues cause India’s film industry to not reach the same operating potential that it could have while the most despairing differences could be remedied with government action (reevaluating entertainment taxes and enforcing piracy laws).
Although Bollywood only consists of 20 percent of India’s total film production, it is the most widely distributed and therefore has created common archetypes associated with Indian film. It has also developed over time to include filming or dubbing in different languages (over 20) so the regional and global reach has been more expansive than other Indian film industries. “Bollywood” has thus developed into a global reference of a certain style of film including elaborate songs, dances, and fantastical romantic stories. This form of Indian popular culture has even influenced the Hollywood industry to reinvest in musicals in recent years. The Indian film industry will continue to have to negotiate internal completion and regional and global demands to garner further revenues and exposure for underrepresented genres.
Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire by Vijay Mishra
Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/09/03/bollywood-indias-film-industry-by-the-numbers-infographic/#18d3cc5b2488
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2015/10/23/indias-film-industry-a-10-billion-business-trapped-in-a-2-billion-body/#262771fe70d2
Good research
A Westerner’s exposure to the film industry in India has more than likely been to Bollywood, the lavish melodramatic style of Hindi language film productions that originated from Mumbai (named Bombay prior to 1995). Bollywood is a term that combines Bombay and Hollywood, associating the two largest film industries by name. Bollywood is not the only Indian movie industry but it does produce the most films and has been more widely distributed internationally than the other industries. The history of India’s film industry is intertwined with the development of Bollywood, the country’s infrastructure for film viewing and distribution, and the narratives and genres developed for regional markets.
The Bollywood film industry began in 1913 with Raja Harishchandra and has contributed to the prolific production of Indian full-feature films. Throughout every decade since, India has produced in total more feature films than any other country, including the United States Hollywood industry. For example, in 2012 India produced 1,602 films with 2.6 billion tickets sold compared to 476 full feature films in the U.S. with only 1.36 billion tickets sold. However, in that same year, Hollywood box office revenue was $10.8 billion compared to the entire Indian film industry’s 1.6 billion. Yearly gross revenues of Bollywood and Indian films do not typically earn more than Hollywood films but there are more box office tickets sold for Indian films.
There are several factors that cause the disparity in Indian film revenue. Evaluations of the disparity claim that some reasons include: lower screen to person ratio than the U.S., single screen venues, fractured film industry, low ticket prices, high entertainment taxes, and government supported piracy. These issues cause India’s film industry to not reach the same operating potential that it could have while the most despairing differences could be remedied with government action (reevaluating entertainment taxes and enforcing piracy laws).
Although Bollywood only consists of 20 percent of India’s total film production, it is the most widely distributed and therefore has created common archetypes associated with Indian film. It has also developed over time to include filming or dubbing in different languages (over 20) so the regional and global reach has been more expansive than other Indian film industries. “Bollywood” has thus developed into a global reference of a certain style of film including elaborate songs, dances, and fantastical romantic stories. This form of Indian popular culture has even influenced the Hollywood industry to reinvest in musicals in recent years. The Indian film industry will continue to have to negotiate internal completion and regional and global demands to garner further revenues and exposure for underrepresented genres.
Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire by Vijay Mishra
Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/09/03/bollywood-indias-film-industry-by-the-numbers-infographic/#18d3cc5b2488
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2015/10/23/indias-film-industry-a-10-billion-business-trapped-in-a-2-billion-body/#262771fe70d2
Despite many peoples preconceived notions about the dominance of Hollywood, modern India actually houses the largest film industry in the world. Film was first introduced to the subcontinent when the Lumiere brothers displayed six short films to a zealous audience in Bombay (now known as Mumbai) in 1896. While the term “Bollywood” was not coined until the 1970s, the first Indian film dates back to 1913. Produced by Dadasaheb Phalke, the silent film Raja Harishchandra was the country’s first feature film. Phalke would go on to oversee the production of twenty-three films between 1913-1918. However, Phalke was not met with much success as the industry was still growing out of infancy. Initially, mythology was the source of many films, with tales from classic epics like The Mahabarata and The Ramayana being converted to film.
Production of films would skyrocket after the release of the first talking film Alam Ara in 1931. Surprisingly, Urdu rather than Hindi was the language used in the film directed by Ardeshir Irani. By that year there were 328 production companies, which when compared to 1927’s 108, was a very large jump in a short time. Major studios were created in Madras, Calcutta, Lahore, Bombay, and Pune as the industry continued to grow during the 30s. Britain not only limited the number of films produced, but restricted usage of film stock during World War II as the materials were used for the war effort. Following India’s independence from Britain in 1947, mythological and historical stories began to be replaced by more realistic ones that focused on the lower classes, Indian culture, and social commentary. This brought with it a new wave of filmmakers such as Bimal Roy and Satyajit Ray. Films began to have longer runs than ever before, with Jeevita Nauka becoming the first Indian film to run for more than six months in 1951. This era of post-independence film is typically seen as the golden age of Indian cinema. Following this era was the beginning of many trends that people associate with Bollywood and Indian cinema today. Songs and dances became much more present in the 70s as celebrities used them to build their fame beyond simply acting. Often songs would chart solely based on the performance of the movie they were featured in.
India has a diverse population and is home to dozens of languages. Naturally, this creates not only a language barrier for films but a cultural one as well. What some may think is funny in one language may not necessarily translate humorously into another. To compensate this, India early on became the premier country when it came to subbing and dubbing. The production of movies in all major languages has actually dwindled in the past thirty or so year, but was much more common in the 1970s and 1980s where they were often released in at least six languages. English as a whole was avoided following independence, but as the country’s film industry continues to expand into the 21st century, usage of English is sure to increase as more Americans and English are capable of watching the films.
Sources:
https://www.goldenglobes.com/articles/brief-history-indian-cinema
Click to access 08_chapter.2.pdf
Good discussion
The history of India’s relationship with film is as old and storied as the industry’s American counterpart. Film found its way into India during the technology’s infancy; it was even delivered to the nation on behalf of the Lumiere brothers who were two of the earliest filmmakers/pioneers. The brothers sent a person named Marius Sestier to screen their short films over the course of a few shows to a British audience. One of the members of the audience, however, was Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar who ordered his own film camera from the UK almost immediately. His first film, a wrestling match held in Mumbai’s Hanging Gardens, was shot in 1899 and not only launched his own career as a pioneer filmmaker but launched the Indian film industry. Bhatavdekar also purchased a projector and would screen foreign films along with his own. Sadly, over 99% of the silent films produced at this time by Bhatavdekar and his contemporaries have been lost to time and tragedy.
Apart from Bhatavdekar and his production of early short films, the first film considered to be wholly Indian was 1913’s Raja Harishchandra, a story of the Hindu gods produced by the “father of Indian cinema” Dadasaheb Phalke. Phalke had gained the inspiration for the film while watching a silent film about the life of Christ and desiring to create his own celebration of religion. It was marketed as the “First film of Indian manufacture. Specially prepared at enormous cost… Sure to appeal to our Hindu patrons.” Unfortunately, it is difficult to ascertain just how much this film meant to the native people of India at the time because the press medias in the country at the time were largely ran by colonial English powers and cared little for the landmarks of the Indian film industry. Following India’s independence from these colonial rulers, the Indian film industry experienced a boom and the period from 1944-1960 is considered by film historians as the “Golden Age” of Indian cinema. Indian films began to receive international acclaim during this period including films like “Mother India” receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957 and “Neecha Nagar” receiving the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the very first Cannes film festival in 1946.
In modern cinema, India has grown to be the largest film-producing country in the world by a large margin. The United States, for example, only produces around 65% of the total number of films that India produces per year. The Hindi-language film industry is primarily based in Mumbai and has developed a few different nicknames such as “HiFi,” Hindi Cinema, or, as most Americans refer to it, Bollywood. Every day, more than 20 million Indians go the cinema to see Indian-produced films. While the yearly box office returns in India account for around $5.9 billion (a little more than half of the U.S. box office totals), the country leads the world in the number of cinema admissions. In 2016, around 1.3 billion cinema tickets were sold in the United States compared to the astronomical amount sold in India which was just under 10 billion. Just like the early days of the industry established, Bollywood films are intricately attached to native Indian culture and identity.
Nice work.
Jennifer Isaacs
India’s film industry, commonly known as “Bollywood,” has expanded greatly from it’s humble beginnings. The first feature film made in India was 1912’s silent film Pundalik. By 1931, Bollywood was making less than two hundred sound films a year, but had perfected the art of dubbing to serve the wide number of languages in India. AVM is the oldest production studio in India, having their first successes in the 1940s. After India won it’s war for independence to the to the 1960s are considered Bollywood’s “Golden Age.”
Bollywood has a variety of film genres. One of the main genres is historical epics that come from Mahabra and Sanskrit epic tales. Another popular genre is musicals. Hollywood’s musicals of the 1950s greatly influenced Bollywood, leading to many of Bollywood’s musicals to have a similar style and feel to these musicals. This revival in Bollywood has helped create the current musical revival in the United States with films such as La La Land. Another popular genre is the thriller genre. Bollywood thrillers have been greatly influenced by the Hong Kong film industry. Some of these thrillers have also looked to Shakespeare’s plays. Films such as Maqbool (Macbeth), Omkara (Othello), and Haider (Hamlet) all fall into this category and have done well. For example, after receiving much critical acclaim, Haider won the People’s Choice Award at the Rome Film Festival.
Success of Bollywood films indicate how Bollywood has become a hugely popular industry. In fact one of the richest actors on the planet is an Indian actor named Shah Rukh Khan. Khan is a actor, producer and television personality known to be the “King of Bollywood” and also commonly nicknamed “King Khan”. Mr. Khan’s net worth is 600 million which beats out Tom Cruise by a whopping 120 million placing him 2nd only to Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David (both creators of the Seinfeld show). Bollywood comes no where near to Hollywood in terms of highest grossing films. However, in terms of total films produced a year Bollywood is top in the world. In 2016 alone, the Indian film industry produced 1,600 films, making it the largest producer of that year. To show the difference in scale, in 2016 the United States produced 980 films. That’s only a little over half of how many films were produced in India that year. Moreover, India made 1,602 feature films in 2013 that grossed $1.86 billion from over 90 markets. These high profits are driven by production companies. In India, there are around 1,000 production companies. Only a little over sixty of these production companies end up being successful, but the number of companies is staggering. More than 50% of the production companies are locating in Mumbai. However, the largest film studio, which is in India, is not in Mumbai. Located in Hyperbad, Ramjoi Film City stretches over 2,000 acres. It’s size speaks to the scale of the Indian film industry.
Part of what makes India’s film industry so successful is their perfection of dubbing. Films are usually made in twenty-one different languages. This wide variety in dubbing and sub-titling allows the industry to have a broad reach. Indian films are a important part of the Southeast Asian and East Asian box office. Another aspect that makes India’s film industry so successful is the musical revival in Bollywood. This musical revival makes the Indian film industry important for the Indian music industry. Music averages to be four to five percent of a film’s revenue, while forty-eight percent of India’s music revenue comes from music in films.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/09/03/bollywood-indias-film-industry-by-the-numbers-infographic/#1d94bd6a2488
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls059147425/
K. Moti Gokulsing, K. Gokulsing, Wimal Dissanayake (2004). Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural Change. Trentham Books. p. 17.
Nice research
The Indian film industry has its roots in the advancements to the cinematograph made by the Lumiere Brothers at the end of the nineteenth century. Impressed by the technology’s exhibition in Bombay in 1896, two Indian photographers, Hiralal Sen and H. S. Bhatavdeker, became the first Indian filmmakers with the The Flowers of Persia and The Wrestlers respectively. From these humble, silent-era beginnings has grown the largest and most productive film market in the world. A particularly unique character of the Indian film industry is its domination of the domestic market, successfully staving off western cultural domination in ways that other regional markets have not.
By the 1930s, there were several major film production studios operating in the region, such as Bombay Talkies, Prabhat Film Company, and the New Theaters in Calcutta. The broadening of production and availability of films for the Indian market helped drive the expansion of the industry into the “Golden Age of Indian Cinema” of the 1950s. During this Golden Age Hindi films and filmmakers rose to greater prominence, with crime-dramas, historical epics and films that dealt with social themes and interests. This Hindi film industry, which has come to be known as Bollywood, is now the largest and most important contingent of the Indian film industry.
The Indian film industry is intrinsically linked with the music industry in the country. There is a unique interdependence between the two industries as some 85 percent of music revenue in India came from films. Most productions utilize purpose-made compositions, and many heavily feature music and dance numbers. Indeed, many popular Indian actors and actresses are also accomplished singers and dancers.
In 2001, India finally declared cinema an industry, opening the floodgates for modernization, corporatization, and a great deal of capital. This development has led to a greater proliferation of movie theaters in more remote areas. Multi-screened theaters and more available funding for developers has enabled more experimentation with film structure, themes, and topics that are more rarely touched upon in mainstream cinema. In recent decades, films have explored such issues as homosexuality, HIV, religious fundamentalism and nationalism. The modern Indian film industry has become, not only the largest film industry in the world, but also one of the most introspective and interesting.
Good work.
The Indian film industry, Bollywood, grew into success differently than most others of its kind. Our own film industry produces films that are not necessarily intended to be viewed out of our own western market. The languages available on our movies is limited to English with maybe Spanish and French subtitles. In India, however, they started in the early twentieth century producing about 200 films per year, and dubbing the films they were producing. The films would usually be originally recorded in Hindi and would then get dubbed in the eighteen primary languages in India as well as English.
Bollywood films used to be produced in a very unique way where they would shoot doing multilingual filming process. The actors would shoot the same scene multiple times in multiple languages so that dubbing wouldn’t have to occur. This became very expensive and cumbersome with variable quality being created. Companies then moved to dubbing and using voice actors for this so that the original actors voice could be replicated in the many different languages provided. The Indian film industry has always marketed their movies to be able to go into international markets, and considering probably more than half of the world is watching dubbed or subtitled films anyway, this is a very smart business move.
By 2013 the Indian film industry expanded to be producing more than 1,600 films, per year and bringing in around 1.68 billion dollars in box-office sales. They are featuring 1st run films in 90 market countries with films made in twenty-one different languages that have been dubbed or subtitled. Bollywood films have significant influence in Southeast and East Asian markets as there is a large disparate population in those areas as well as in East Europe and the Middle East. When the USSR was still in power, they were India’s first international market. Bollywood films would be at the top of that market because they were not as dark or depressing as the USSR films could be.
Bollywood has the standard genres that most film industries have, but with regional flavors of each. They create historical epics, musicals influenced by Hollywood, action/crime/thriller films that have some Hong Kong influence, and new contemporary films called Parallel films that are art and indie type features. Some of the most popular films are crime films that have been based of Shakespeare’s plays.
In Bollywood, the actors are usually seen as the “triple threat” where they can sing, dance, and act. They are often also pop stars in the country. This is not surprising considering how closely tied the film and music industry is in India. 48% of music receipts are coming from the film industry, and 4-5% of the revenue is coming from music that is originally composed for the movies.
The Indian film industry continues to grow and be successful. In 2016, India produced 1,600 feature films that were 80 minutes or longer and not documentary dwarfing Nigeria (1,100), the United States (980), and China (700). They smartly stared by marketing their films for international intent, and continue to make popular films today.
Katelynn Santiago
Nice work
As little as fifteen years ago, most Americans could recognize the term “Bollywood,” but the majority of people haven’t even seen a Bollywood film or can name a famous Indian actor or actress. This has changed within the recent years with more and more Indian actors and actresses crossing over from Bollywood to Hollywood and big-budget Bollywood films gaining popularity and notoriety here in the United States. The Indian film industry, with its’ most known attraction Bollywood, has grown exponentially since its’ beginning to become the largest film industry in the world. It is a preconceived notion here in the West that Hollywood dominates, but that isn’t the fact. The Indian film industry produces more than 1,000 films every year and the box office totals around $5.9 billion. With the two-part film “Randamoozham” being set to release in 2020, and with a budget at $155 million (US dollars) the makers of this film are hoping it will reach global fame. Although the budget might not seem groundbreaking compared to Hollywood standards, this is monumental to India. They also intend to incorporate not only big names from Bollywood, but Hollywood as well.
The Indian film industry started off when Dadasaheb Phalke, also know as the “Father of Indian Cinema,” produced “Raja Harishchandra” which is now regarded as the first full-length Indian feature film in 1913, which was a silent film. He went on to manage the production of twenty-three other Indian films from 1913 to 1918. The first Indian film to have sound in it was “Alam Ara” in 1931. This film was the marker for a new age in Indian cinema; there was a huge growth in movie as well as audience size. These early films of the Indian cinema were more focused on mythological and historical tales, but this changed after World War 2. Movies started focusing on the lower class and their hardships with reputable directors like Bimal Roy and Satyajit Ray taking the lead. This trend continued into the 1960s, in which during this time notable actors like Raj Kappor and Dev Anand emerging. In the 1970s Masala movies were essential in Bollywood. Masala is the type of movie that many Bollywood movies are by combining many different genres into one film. The 1980s brought women directors to the forefront of the Bollywood, and in the 1990s a new generation of actors and actresses that brought new techniques and updated performances. One of the most recognizable milestones by the West in Indian cinema is when A.R. Rahman won two academy awards for the soundtrack in “Slumdog Millionaire” which became a huge success worldwide. The main stars in “Slumdog Millionaire” Dev Patel and Freida Pinto have gone on to have massive success in Hollywood, paving the way for more crossover actors and actresses for the future. Music is a huge part of the Bollywood scene and an integral part of its’ films. Intricate choreographed musical numbers are renowned throughout the global industry for their artistry.
Bollywood is now emerging on a global scale and with a growing audience. With more and more attention being paid to the Indian film industry, there is more foreign interest (money) in the producing of Indian films. With foreign interest now directly aimed at Bollywood, films are hoping to breakthrough the international barriers both culturally and language wise. It is only a matter of time before the Indian film industry finds massive success overseas.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jul/25/birth-indias-film-industry-movies-mumbai
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/entertainment/india-most-expensive-film/index.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-bollywood-3549901
Excellent
The Indian film industry has its roots all the way back in the nineteenth century. It was in 1896 that the French film pioneer Lumiere Brother’s films were first shown in Mumbai. After having seen the Lumiere Brother’s films, a still photographer by the name of Save Dada decided that he wanted to follow in their footsteps. He ordered a camera from England and recorded his first movie, ‘The Wrestlers’. The movie was simply a recording of a wrestling match that was shown in 1899, yet it became the first motion picture of the Indian film industry.
Despite its popularity today, the Indian film industry did not enjoy the early success that Hollywood did. A man named Dadasaheb Phalke, affectionately known as the Father of Indian Cinema, made the first full-length feature film, a silent film called Raja Harishchandra, in 1913. This film was a commercial success, but the industry did not see much sustained growth until the 1930s with the introduction of ‘Talkies’. A Talkie is simply a film with sound. The first of these films was released in Bombay in 1931 and was called ‘Alam Ara’. This ushered in a new era of Indian cinema. Several new production companies made way for a large increase in the number of films being released. The number of films released nearly tripled from 1931 compared to 1927.
After a decline due to World War II, the modern Indian film industry took full bloom. During this time, the focus of films shifted from historical and mythical subjects and began to focus on pressing social issues. Films by popular filmmakers Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy made films that focused on the sufferings of the lower class. Indian films began to develop an international presence during what is considered to be the golden age of Indian cinema in the 1950s and the 1960s. One distinctive characteristic that separated Indian movies from other international films was the importance of songs.
Masala movies became popular in Bollywood in the 1970s. Masala movies were movies that freely mixed genres, oftentimes incorporating musicals. These movies were a bit of a break from the previous films that focused on difficult issues. Masala movies gave the audience an escape from their misery and everyday struggles. The most well-known Masala movie globally has to be ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, which opened in 2008 to widespread critical success. Despite being directed and produced by the British, the film still starred Indian actors and featured music by popular Indian composer A. R. Rahman. The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and took home 8 of them, including Best Picture. However, the film stirred up controversy. Many on the inside of the Indian film industry saw ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ as a portrayal of how the West saw Indian poverty and claimed that it was not an accurate portrayal of the country. Acclaimed Indian filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan even went as far as to call the film “a very anti-Indian film.” As Bollywood has become more popular globally, this is a problem that the industry will face as Western film companies may attempt to capitalize on that popularity.
Sources:
https://www.mapsofindia.com/my-india/history/history-of-indian-cinema
Good work.
India’s film industry has a rich history that has allowed it to become the largest film industry in the world. The Indian film industry got its start back in 1896 when the Lumiere Brothers’ Cinematograph first came to Bombay to show some silent short films, and it captured India’s attention. By 1899, Harishchandra Bhatvadekar had recorded a wrestling match in Bombay’s Hanging Gardens using similar equipment, but it was not until 1913 that the public viewed a full length Indian film, Rajah Harishandra. The film was directed by Dadasaheb Phalke who is viewed as a pioneer of the film industry for his knowledge on India’s language and culture. Phalke created a trend that set the industry in motion. Several silent films were created, and with low ticket pricing they gained a growing audience. Next in 1931 India’s first talkie, Alam Ara, was produced by Ardeshir Irani. It was a costume drama that used many characters and film songs that helped solidify India’s use of song and dance in many of its movies. Alam Ara about many talking films, with most coming in various languages since there are many languages spoken in India. The multi-language films gave rise to dubbing technology that allows films to be heard in 21 different languages.
The rise in talking films created narratives that related to India’s history and to mythological texts. Indian epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana influenced popular Indian cinema. Stories relating to mythology gods and goddesses were also a huge sensation that has led to a lot success. Historical films were prevalent as Indians put nationalist tones in their movies to show their desire of independence from British rule. In 1947 India gained independence, which started the Golden Age in their film industry until about the 1960s. During the Golden Age, the quality and the quantity of films greatly increased. These films had themes of hard-hitting social realism that were often called Parallel Cinema. The Golden Age also brought advanced technology that helped create even more significant film scores. Today music in Indian films now rakes in about 4-5% of film revenue and 48% of all Indian music revenue.
Since the Golden Age, the Indian film industry has only gotten bigger. Dramatic musicals are still very popular with influence coming from Hollywood, as well action/crime movies with influences from Hong Kong’s film industry. Today there are over 1000 production companies that all try to make Indian films global hits. In 2013, India sold over 2 billion movie tickets, and generated 1.9 billion dollars in film revenue. The Indian film industry has expanded and now reaches 90 global markets, which are a major source of revenue. Indian cinema has also been recognized at he Academy Awards on several occasions for being nominated for Best Foreign Language film. Netflix has now entered India showing where the next direction that the Indian film industry can focus on if it sees promise. Nonetheless, the Indian film industry has come along way since the break through of its first full-length film in 1913.
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The beginnings of the Indian film industry mirror that of other global film industries, advancement in camera equipment made by the Lumiere brothers. India like the rest of the world was amazed by the Lumiere brothers’ films, and sought to replicate these moving pictures in Bombay. With the interest to produced film sparked, hopeful Indian cinematographers began importing cameras from the United Kingdom. A wrestling match at the Hanging Gardens in Bombay, filmed by Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar, was the first film captured and produced by an Indian cinematographer. Bhatavdekar continued to document Indian life through the medium of silent film through the early 1900s. Unfortunately, the majority of early Indian silent films have been lost.
The 1920s saw India beginning to import Hollywood films en masse. Indian audiences were captivated by American action films, and Indian film-makers noticed. While the Indian film industry’s beginnings were rooted in religious epics and historical pieces, the 1940s saw an increase in Indian produced dramatic and action films. Throughout this period of time, the industry saw a consistent increase in ticket sales each year, a large demographic of which was the working class. From the 1940s through the 1960s International audiences began to take note of Indian produced films. Indian films began to accrue critical acclaim throughout this period as well; the 1957 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was awarded to an Indian produced film, “Mother India”. This time-period is often referred to as the “Golden Age” of the Indian film industry.
Indian culture, history, and demographics are greatly reflected in Bollywood movies. India is a diverse country with 880 languages (31 official) spoken. This linguistic diversity has directly effected the production of Indian films and innovation in dubbing technology. India’s distinct style of music, dance, and architecture as well as its diverse religious communities have also had a real impact on the Indian film industry, specifically the Hindi film industry, Bollywood. Unlike Hollywood, Bollywood is not a physical location. Bollywood production centers around Mumbai, India and is the largest producer of films within the modern Indian film industry.
The modern India film industry has grown far beyond its origins. Following the stagnation of Indian film production in the late 1980s, was a resurgence of production. This period, beginning in the 1990s and extending to present production, is often referred to as “New Bollywood”. The 2000s marked an increase in global Bollywood recognition. This popularity paired with the booming growth of India’s economy led to a massive growth in film production. India surpassed the United States to become the largest film-producing country in the 1970s. Ticket sales have also rapidly expanded. Annual Indian box office returns still trail the United States at $5.9 billion, however the country is a global leader in the number of tickets sold. The most recent data notes that 10 billion movie tickets were sold in India almost ten times that of the tickets sold in the United States.
Sources:
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-bollywood-3549901
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_India
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bollywood-film-industry-India
Excellent
Like the American film industry, the Indian film industry began with silent films. The first film ever produced by the Indian film industry was Pundalik in 1912, and the first feature film was Raja Harishchandra in 1913. This story followed tales from the Sanskrit epics, and the female parts were played by male actors. The Indian film industry first produced a film with sound (or a ‘talkie’) in 1931, and the Indian film industry has come a very long way from these first few films. Today, they make more than two hundred films per year, and many of them are dubbed into multiple different languages. This is because there are many other languages spoken in India than just Hindi, so dubbing is necessary to reach the largest audience possible. The films today are dubbed or have subtitles added for twenty one different languages.
As the middle class has grown in India, so has the Indian film industry. Tickets to see a movie at the theater cost a relatively small amount of money, so people are willing and able to go more often. In 2016, the Asia and Pacific box office made $14.6 billion, which is massive compared to the United States box office, which made $11.4 billion. Also in 2016, the Indian film industry produced approximately 1600 feature films which sold in ninety different markets and made $1.87 billion, making them a major influence in the Asia and Pacific box office.
The Indian film industry’s first big international market was Soviet Russia, but their films are also popular in countries located in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The most widely known genre might be the typical Bollywood musical, but the Indian film industry actually has a just as varied number of genres as we do here in the United States. The Indian film industry produces historical epics, such as Mahabarata and Sanskrit epics, action, crime, and thrillers, such as Maqbool, Omkara, and Haider. These three feature films are Indian versions of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet, but many action, crime, and thriller movies produced by the Indian film industry were influenced by Alfred Hitchcock films. Another example of foreign influence on the Indian film industry are the previously mentioned Bollywood films. These Bollywood films are influenced by the classic musicals that the United State’s film industry previously produced.
The Indian film industry has over one thousand film production companies currently. AVM Productions is the largest surviving film company in India, and the Ramoji Film City is the largest film studio in the entire world. It is located in Hyderabad, India, on roughly two thousand acres of land. Over fifty percent of the total one thousand film production companies are located in Mumbai, as is the headquarters of Bollywood. Music is also very important to the Indian film industry. Sale of film soundtracks is between four to five percent of film revenue, but it is forty eight percent of all the Indian music revenue.
The Indian film industry has gone from being a small essentially hobby, with only silent films, to being a massive industry with large box office sales, many genres, and many different languages available.
Very nice
The story of the Indian film industry begins in 1896 when the Lumiere brothers from France when they brought film technology to the country for the first time. The first Indian film was then created in 1912, followed by their first feature film in 1913, Raja Harischandra. The next major leap in Indian film production would be almost twenty years later with the production of their first film with sound in 1931. This then evolved into the massively popular Indian film industry of today that produces hundreds of films each year in many different languages to accommodate the global demand for Indian produced films as well as the cultural and lingual diversity in India continues to increase. India is also home to the world’s largest film city, Ramoji Film City, located in Hyderbad, India and the country its self is home to just under one thousand film production companies.
Though the Indian film industry is known best worldwide by its famous Bollywood productions, it has a much more diverse range of genres and styles than most people are aware of. This includes everything from action, comedy, horror, and all other genres that the American film industry has as well. This even includes a series of movies recreating some of Shakespeare’s most famous epics such as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth.
Beginning in 1896 with the introduction of film technology, the Indian film industry has made many incredible advancements in a relatively short time. Leaps in film technology as well as having a nation that loves films unlike any other led to India becoming the film powerhouse that it is today.