India Movies : Indian Cinema

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India Travel

In India, cinema came into existence in the year 1896, on July 7, when Lumière Brothers’ showed six short films at Watson Hotel, Mumbai. Three years later, Harischandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar, shot and demonstrated two short films. Thereafter several attempts were taken in the early part of the 20th century to make films and stage plays.

In the year 1913, the first intrinsic silent feature film named ‘Raja Harishchandra’ (3700 feet long) was released and it was a huge success. It was directed by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (1870 - 1944) affectionately called Dadasaheb Phalke, a successful painter more popularly the 'Father of Indian Cinema'. He got inspired by seeing the movie ‘The Life Of Christ’ on a trip to London. Indian film industry blossomed with the introduction of sound in the year 1931 when the first talkie film called ‘Alam Ara’ released, directed by Ardeshir Irani, later dubbed into Hindi and Urdu. There on the film industry was splited on language lines where Hindi mainly being the North and Tamil, Telugu in South.

In today’s era, Bollywood is known as ‘Hindi Cinema’. The name ‘Bollywood’ is an amalgamation of ‘Bombay’ (the old name of Mumbai) and ‘Hollywood’ (the center of the U.S.A. film industry). It’s a colloquial name given to the Mumbai based Hindi Film Industry in India and is considered to be the hub of Indian cinema.

Indian movies are mainly classified as musicals. Movies are hardly made without any song or dance numbers. Indian audiences want their money worth it by watching a full entertainer. Indian commercial films are of two to three hours long with an intermission in whatever regional center they are made. They tend to be melodramatic and sentimental. Indian movies also features romance, comedy, action, suspense, and other generic elements. Apart from commercial cinema, there is also Indian cinema that aspires to seriousness or art. People in India call them 'Art' films.

The primary difference between American and Indian commercial cinema, is that Indian film usually feature periodic song and dance routines, which, in a good movie, are expected to move the story. Songs are sung by professional playback singers and lip synched by dancing actors and actresses. Renowned singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, K. L. Saigal, Suraiyya, Noor Jehan has recorded many songs for Indian cinemas.

People from various parts of India take part in Indian movies. Thousands of actors and actresses are already working in Indian cinema and thousands are waiting eagerly to get a break in the stardom. Only a few people became national icons like Amitabh Bachchan, who was voted the "greatest star of stage or screen" by a millennium poll conducted by the BBC. He is the first Indian actor to be featured in Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in London. Apart from him there are big stars like Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Shah Rukh Khan who has made the most of their fame. Directors like Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, Shyam Benegal, Mehboob, Satyajit Ray (got an ‘Oscar’ for the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award) have left behind an indelible mark in the Indian celluloid.

Budgets of Indian cinema are modest by Hollywood standards. Sets, costumes, special effects and cinematography were less than world-class up until 1990s. From there on Indian cinema has taken a long plunge in increasing its standards and to be at par with Hollywood. Today funds are coming from private distributors, financers and few large studios. Film sequences today are shot overseas and that has proved a huge box office hit. Although Bollywood is suffering from widespread copyright infringement, where it is still one of the richest industries where a huge amount comes from overseas film rights.

Like other film industries, Indian cinemas also have their share of accolades, Filmfare Awards being the most prestigious among them all. The first Filmfare Awards was started in 1953 by the Indian Screen Magazine ‘Filmfare’. There are other awards like Zee Cine Awards, Star Screen Awards, Stardust Awards, IIFA Awards, Apsara Awards et al. Award ceremonies are usually a star studded with a lot of glam and glitter where the events are lavishly staged spectacles, featuring singing, dancing, and lots of stars and starlets. In 1973, the Indian government has sponsored the National Film Awards and it also gives the Dadasaheb Phalke Award annually as recognition of a lifetime contribution to Indian cinema. The award is in memory of Dadasaheb Phalke, as a tribute to the Father of Indian cinema.

The Indian film industry is one of the largest in the world. Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad is the world's largest production complex and the biggest movie studio in the world. India also features the cheapest cost of tickets in the world. Indian cinema is supported mainly by the vast cinema going Indian public, although Indian films have been gaining increasing popularity in the rest of the world — given the large Indian diaspora in English speaking countries at large.