India is home to one of the largest film industries
in the world. Every year thousands of movies are produced in India.
Indian film industry comprises of Hindi films, regional movies and art
cinema. The Indian film industry is supported mainly by a vast
film-going Indian public, though Indian films have been gaining
increasing popularity in the rest of the world, especially in countries
with large numbers of emigrant Indians.
India is a large country where many languages are spoken. Many of the
larger languages support their own film industry. Some of the popular
regional film industries in India are Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada,
Malayalam and Punjabi. The Hindi/Urdu film industry, based in Mumbai,
formerly Bombay, is called Bollywood. Similar neologisms have been
coined for the Tamil film industry Kollywood and the Telugu film
industry. Tollygunge is metonym for the Bengali film industry, long
centered in the Tollygunge district of Kolkata. The Bengali language
industry is notable as having nurtured the director Satyajit Ray, an
internationally renowned filmmaker and a winner of many awards.
The Bollywood industry is the largest in terms of films produced and
box office receipts, just as Urdu/Hindi speakers outnumber speakers of
other Indian languages. Many workers in other regional industries, once
established, generally move to Bollywood for greater spotlight or
opportunity. An interesting example of this phenomenon is the famous
music director A.R. Rahman. He started his career in Tamil film industry
and later moved to the Bollywood.
