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History of Indian Cinema
The Indian film industry is the largest in the world in terms of ticket sales and number of films produced annually (877 feature films and 1177 short films were released in the year 2003 alone). India accounts for 73% of movie admissions in the Asia-Pacific region, and earnings are currently estimated at US$8.9 billion. The industry is mainly supported by the vast cinema-going Indian public. The Central Board of Film Certification of India cites on its website that every three months an audience as large as India's billion-strong population visits cinema halls. Indian films are popular in various parts of the world, especially in countries with significant Indian communities.

Cinema was introduced to India on July 7, 1896. It began with the Lumiere Brothers' Cinematography, unveiling six silent short films at the Watson's Hotel in Bombay, namely Entry of Cinematographe, The Sea Bath, Arrival of a Train, A Demolition, Ladies & Soldiers on Wheels and Leaving the Factory. The Times of India carried details of the "Living Photographic Pictures in Life-Size Reproductions by Lumiere Brothers". In the same year, the Madras Photographic Store advertised "animated photographs". Daily screenings of films commenced in Bombay in 1897 by Clifton and Co.'s Meadows Street Photography Studio.

In 1898, Hiralal Sen started to film scenes of theatrical productions at the Classic Theatre in Calcutta, inspired by Professor Stevenson (who had brought to India the first bioscope to India's film presentation alongside the stage production of The Flower Of Persia; his debut was a contribution to this presentation. He continued making similar films to complement theatrical productions, which were shown as added attractions during intermission, in private screenings for high society households or taken to distant venues where the stage performers could not reach.

Cinema houses were set up in major Indian cities in this period, like one in Madras (in 1900 by Major Warrick), the Novelty Cinema in Bombay (where newsreels from the Boer War were shown) and the Elphinstone Picture Palace in Calcutta (set up by J.F. Madan in 1907). Apart from these, a number of film shows were arranged in tents; examples are: shows arranged by two Italians, Colorello and Cornaglia, in tents at the Azad Maidan in Bombay, J.F. Madan's tent cinema at the Calcutta Maidan. Another popular mode of broadcasting films was the touring cinema. In 1904, Manek Sethna started the Touring Cinema Co. in Bombay and a year later, Swamikannu Vincent, a railway draughtsman, set up a touring cinema in South India. Pathe, the famous film production company set up an Indian office in 1907.

A scene from Raja Harishchandra -the first feature film made in India was a narrative named Pundalik, by N.G. Chitre and R.G. Torney. The first full-length Indian feature film was Raja Harishchandra (3700 feet as compared to 1500 for Pundalik), made in 1913 and released commercially in May that year, by Dadasaheb Phalke. Phalke had attended a screening of The Life of Christ at P.B. Mehta's American-Indian Cinema and was inspired to make films himself. He was convinced of the possibility of establishing an indigenous film industry by focusing on Indian themes. In this regard, he said Like the life of Christ, we shall make pictures on Rama and Krishna. The film was about an honest king who for the sake of his principles sacrifices his kingdom and family before the gods, who are impressed with his honesty and restore him to his former glory. The film was a success, and Phalke went on to make more mythological films till the advent of talkies, and commercialization of Indian films lessened his popularity.

In 1916, Universal Pictures set up Hollywood's first Indian agency (see Hollywood meets India, below). The first South Indian feature was Rangaswamy Nataraja Mudaliar's Keechaka Vadham, released in 1918. The following year, he made the film Draupadi Vastrapaharanam, featuring Anglo-Indian actress Marian Hill who played the role of Draupadi.

Alam Ara (The Light of the World; 1931), directed by Ardeshir Irani, was the first Indian sound film.
Chandidas(1932), directed by Debaki Bose under New Theatres banner, contained background Music for the first time in Indian Cinema.
Debaki Bose's Seeta(1934), made under the banner of East India Film Company, was the first Indian talkie shown in any International film festival. It was shown in Venice Film Festival, where it won an Honorary Diploma. He was the 1st Indian director to receive any international award.
Nitin Bose's 1935 film Bhagya Chakra, produced by New Theatres, was the first Indian film to use playback singing. The movie was remade in Hindi with the title Dhoop Chhaon, which was the first Hindi film to use playback singing.
Neecha Nagar (Lowly City) (1946), directed by Chetan Anand, bagged the Palme d'Or (Best Film) award, (then known as 'Grand Prix'), at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946, and became the first Indian film to get major recognition in international film festivals.

Regional Film Industries

Regional Film Industries
A cinema hall in Delhi, India is a large country where many languages are spoken. According to the 1991 Census of India there are about 10,400 'raw mother tongues' in India. If closely related and mutually comprehensible dialects are grouped, the number can be reduced to 415 main languages. These 415 languages are the ones surveyed in the Indian census. Indian film producers have made films in thirty of the largest languages. However, only the very largest language groups support major regional industries. These are: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Odiya, Malayalam. Official statistics categorise Indian films according to the languages in which they are distributed.

There is a great deal of mobility between the regional industries. Many workers in other regional industries, once their talent and popularity is established, move on to work in other film industries, nationally as well as internationally. For example, A. R. Rahman, one of the best known film music composers in Indian cinema, started his career in Tamil cinema in Chennai but has since worked in Bollywood, London, and New York. Similarly, films that succeed in one language are often remade or dubbed in others. Films like Padosan and Roja, for example, were re-made or dubbed from their original Bengali and Tamil versions respectively, into Hindi.

The Hindi Film Industry (Bollywood)
The Hindi film industry, based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), is the largest branch of Indian cinema. Hindi film Industry is often called 'Bollywood' (a blending of Hollywood and Bombay). The word "Bollywood" is sometimes applied to Indian cinema as a whole, especially outside South Asia and the South Asian diaspora, but this usage is incorrect. Bollywood has been recently greatly criticized for violation of Indian cultural values and its discussion of controversial topics. It is considered the most liberal out of the Indian language film industries.

Regional movies are distinctively different from Bollywood (Hindi) movies, as the stories and themes of these movies portray the culture of the region from which they originate, while most Bollywood movies nowadays are greatly influenced by Western culture.

Dadasaheb Phalke

Although Bollywood may not distribute as many films, it can be considered to be the largest in terms of viewers. Bollywood movies are watched by a majority of Indian movie goers. It also has international recognition, especially in Western countries such as the UK, USA, Canada and Australia, where there are large South Asian communities.

Dadasaheb Phalke, recognized as the father of Indian cinema, was a pioneer of movies in Marathi. He produced the first Indian silent movie, and later some Marathi talkies. In his honor, a much coveted "Dadasaheb Phalke Award" is given annually for exceptional contribution to Indian cinema.

The outbreak of World War II and the subsequent resource scarcity caused the British Raj to impose a limit on the use of filmstrip in 1943 to 11,000 feet, a sharp reduction from the 20,000 feet that was common till then. As a result, the number of films produced during the War was substantially lower than in previous years. Nonetheless, prior to the ban, an important shift occurred in the industry: independent studios formed, actors and actresses were signed to contracts limiting who they could work for, and films moved from social themes to folklore legends. 1942's Balanagamma typified these changes: the film featured fantasy elements of cultural lore, was produced by Gemini Studios, and its producers added a restricting clause to the lead actress' contract. By 1947, nearly all films were produced by studios with contracted actors.

Art Cinema in India
Art Cinema in India

In addition to commercial cinema, there is also Indian cinema that aspires to seriousness or art. This is known to film critics as "New Indian Cinema" or sometimes "the Indian New Wave", but most people in India simply call such films "art films". These films deal with a wide range of subjects but many are in general explorations of complex human circumstances and relationships within an Indian setting.

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

The art directors of this period owed more to foreign influences, such as Italian neorealism or the French New Wave, than they did to the genre conventions of commercial Indian cinema. The best known New Cinema directors were Bengali: Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, and Bimal Roy. Some well-known films of this movement include the Apu Trilogy by Ray , the Calcutta Trilogy of Sen, Meghe Dhaka Tara by Ghatak (all in Bengali) and Do Bigha Zameen by Roy (Hindi). Of these film-makers, Satyajit Ray was arguably the most well-known: his films obtained considerable international recognition during the mid-twentieth century. He was awarded an Oscar for life time achievement in 1992. His prestige, however, did not translate into large-scale commercial success. His films played primarily to art-house audiences (students and intelligentsia) in the larger Indian cities, or to film buffs on the international art-house circuit in India and abroad. Like him, Mrinal Sen who has primarily been a political film director and has received international acclaim, is not well known for commercial success, with the lone exception being Bhuvan Shome, which ushered the New Indian Cinema.

Noteworthy Indian Art Cinema women filmmakers from the diaspora include Shashwati Talukdar, Nandini Sikand, Sonali Gulati, Prema Karanth, Nisha Ganatra, Eisha Marjara, Pratibha Parmar, Liggy Pullappally, and Shanti Thakur.

Art cinema was also well-supported in the South Indian state of Kerala. Some outstanding Malayalam movie makers are Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, T. V. Chandran, Shaji N. Karun, and M. T. Vasudevan Nair. Some of their films include National Film Award-winning [vidheyan] Mammootty bagged the national award for that film,Elippathayam, Piravi (which won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival), Vaanaprastham and Nizhalkkuthu.

Starting in the 1970s, Kannada film makers from Karnataka state produced a string of serious, low-budget films. Girish Kasaravalli is one of the few directors from that period who continues to make non-commercial films. He is the only Indian director other than Satyajit Ray and Buddhadev Dasgupta to win the Golden Lotus Awards four times.

Commercial cinema

From the 1970s onwards Hindi cinema produced a wave of art films. The foremost among the directors who produced such films is Shyam Benegal. Others in this genre include Govind Nihalani (Ardh Satya), Mani Kaul (Uski Roti), Kumar Shahani (Maya Darpan), H. K. Verma (Kadamabari),M.S. Sathyu (Garam Hava).

Many cinematographers, technicians and actors began in art cinema and moved to commercial cinema. The actor Naseeruddin Shah is one notable example; he has never achieved matinee idol status, but has turned out a solid body of work as a supporting actor and a star in independent films such as Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding. H.K.Verma, a cinematographer turned to direction with his maiden venture Kadambari starring Shabana Azmi.

Marathi art cinema has been continuously churning out gems even when Marathi mainstream cinema had no suffered a setback. Dr.Jabbar Patel, Bhave-Sukthankar, Amol Palekar are some of the notable names while acclaimed movie titles are Umbartha, Dhyaasparva, Uttarayan, Vaastupurush etc.

Globalization of Indian cinema

Contact between Indian and Western cinemas was established in the early days of film in India. Dadasaheb Phalke was moved to make Raja Harishchandra after watching the film Life of Christ at P.B. Mehta's American-Indian Cinema. Similarly, some other early film directors were inspired by Western movies.

In India at least 80 percent of films shown in the late 1920s were American, even though twenty-one studios manufactured local films, eight or nine of them in regular production.

A number of Indian films have been accused of plagiarising from Hollywood Movies. Due to the long time taken by courts to decide a case, few cases relating to copyright violations are brought up. One of the reasons Bollywood hesitates in purchasing rights is the assumption that these would run into millions of dollars, though according to some like screenwriter-director Anurag Kashyap, this is incorrect; He argues that while the films may cost millions of dollars in the west, the rights would be less expensive for Hindi remakes because the price would be based on the audience's buying power, the economy and the number of bidders. In 2003, best-selling fiction writer Barbara Taylor Bradford brought a copyright infringement suit against Sahara Television for allegedly making a television series (Karishma: A miracle of destiny) out of her book, A Woman of Substance, without acquiring the legal rights to do so.

Today, Indian cinema is becoming increasingly westernised. This trend is most strongly apparent in Bollywood. Newer Bollywood movies sometimes include Western actors (such as Rachel Shelley in Lagaan), try to meet Western production standards, conduct filming overseas, adopt some English in their scripts or incorporate some elements of Western-style plots. Bollywood also produces box-office hit like the films Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Kal Ho Naa Ho, both of which deal with the overseas Indian's experience.

International Cannesfilm festival

However, the meeting between west and India is a two-way process: Western audiences mostly of Indian origin are becoming more interested in India, as evidenced by the success of Lagaan, Bride and Prejudice and Sivaji: The Boss. As Western audiences for Indian cinema grow, Western producers are funding maverick Indian filmmakers like Gurinder Chadha (Bride and Prejudice) and Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding). Both Chadha and Nair are of Indian origin but do not live in India, and who made their names in Western independent films; they have now been funded to create films that "interpret" the Indian cinematic tradition for Westerners. A similar filmmaker is Deepa Mehta of Canada, whose films include the trilogy Fire, Earth and Water.

Indian cinema is also influencing the English and American musical; Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! (2001) incorporates a Bollywood-style dance sequence; The Guru and The 40-Year-Old Virgin feature Indian-style song-and-dance sequences; A. R. Rahman, a film composer, was recruited for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams; and a musical version of Hum Aapke Hain Koun has played in London's West End.

INDIAN CINEMA