What comes to mind when you hear the word “Bollywood” ? A distant location, a foreign language, or maybe a tragic romance story ?

Introduction:

What comes to mind when you hear the word “Bollywood”? A distant location, a foreign language, or maybe a tragic romance story?While this is all true, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Bollywood is a humorous nickname for the Indian cinema industry which is considered one of the most powerful in the world, with a history dating all the way back to the 1920s.

What is Bollywood?:

Bollywood is an informal term that is popularly used to describe an Indian movie industry, also known as the Bombay film business, that mainly produces films in the Hindi language. It is based in the city of Mumbai, India and although people often incorrectly use the term for referring to the entire Indian cinema, Bollywood only represents a part of the Indian movie industry and not the whole. Not only is Bollywood the largest film producing industry in India, but is also one of the largest in the entire world. Although Bollywood is normally related to Hindi cinema, many Bollywood movies have been frequently found to use a number of regional languages, including Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, and so on. The name Bollywood is a combination of the previous name of Mumbai, which was Bombay, and the name for the heart of the American movie industry, being Hollywood. The term bollywood itself has actually been heavily  criticised throughout the years, because people believe it implies that the industry is a “poor cousin” of hollywood, kind of like a knock off, or a less good version. This however couldn't be further from the truth as we will see later on.

Interesting facts:

-Producing between 1,500 and 2,000 movies a year! across 20 languages, India has the largest film industry in the world (yes, bigger than Hollywood), in terms of number of films released.

 -The popularity of Bollywood movies is reflected statistically, too. Box office revenue in India was estimated to have reached an all-time-high of $1.4 billion in 2018, with Hollywood movies only accounting for 10% of ticket sales in India in 2018 

-Other areas of India's film industry include the lesser known Tollywood (the Telugu-language sector) and Kollywood (Tamil-language sector). For context, these are a few of many Hollywood-inspired nicknames around the world—Nollywood refers to Nigeria's film industry.

Map:

As you can see, Mumbai lies on the west coast of india. With over 12.5 million inhabitants, it is the financial centre and most populated city of india. While it is the home of the fancy and extravagant Bollywood scene, Mumbai heavily struggles with poverty, as pictured in the slums located outside the city centre. These major social inequalities should be taken into consideration when talking about Mumbai's movie scene.  

History:

1)  Early developments: The first film made in India was the 1913 silent film Raja Harishchandra which was the first ever Indian film shown in London in 1914.  The first talking film was released in 1931, by which time India was producing more than 100 films a year.

2) Golden Age: After WW2, in 1947, India gained independence from Britain. This is where modern Indian cinema really begun.During this time, the film industry experienced tremendous and unprecedented growth; the film industry was flourishing. Themes of the movies included the lower class’s survival and daily hardships.  

3) The formation of Bollywood: The term “Bollywood” was coined in the 1970s.During this time, the conventions of Bollywood films were established, such as the masala film (which freely mixes the genres of romance, melodrama, comedy, and musical). Fun fact: masala literally means spice in Hindi so that tells you a lot about the kind of content to expect: In the 1980s, the Indian movie industry was producing around 800 films annually, making it the world’s largest film industry.

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