BollywoodMovies.com
Bollywood History
Bollywood History
It was the Lumir brothers who first brought the moving pictures to India when they showed a series of six silent films at the Watson Hotel in Bombay in 1896. In 1899, Harischandra Bhatvadekar was the first person in India to shoot a film with the use of the projector invented by Thomas Edison. Two others, Hiralal Sen and F. B. Thanawalla produced two short films in 1900. In 1902, the first movies were imported into India, but it is Dhundiraj Govind Phalke who released the first full length silent film called Raja Harischandra in 1913. Thus Bollywood was born.
Bollywood is a term coined to refer to the Indian film industry, more specifically the Hindi productions of Mumbai. It is a play on the US movie location, Hollywood, and combines the names Bombay and Hollywood. However, there is no actual place associated with this name.
Raja Harischandra was a resounding success and throughout the 1920’s, the film industry in India continued to grow. Many new production companies were formed, the most prominent of which was Santharam. The arrival of sound technology quickly replaced the silent films. These films were called “talkies”, with the first one shown at the Majestic Cinema in Bombay in 1931.
The social protest years of the 1930’s and onwards gave rise to films that included themes of social justice. The storylines were gripping and involved many aspects of ordinary life in the plots. The first color film was released in 1937, but it was not until the 1960’s that color films became commonplace replacing the black and white films. The memorable films of the 1940’s featured plots focusing on India’s fight for independence. Some of the most memorable films from this era include Duniya Na Mane, Achut Kanya and Sant Thaukaram.
The impact of Indian Cinema was evident at the first Indian Film Festival held in Bombay in 1952. Satyajit Ray and the release of Pather Panchali in 1955 was a turning point for Bollywood films. This film received international recognition at the Cannes Festival and a host of awards and accolades. During the 1950’s the films started to rely more on certain stars in the films, which brought about a great change.
During the 1960’s many films were released that experienced moderate success at the box office. The films were characterized by the human perspective they showed of ordinary events, rather than fantasizing them. Each part of India had its own flavor in the films it produced and one influenced the other. Musical love stories witnessed a revival in the 1980’s and during the 1990’s movies were released in languages other than Hindi. In all there have been more than 27,000 feature films and thousands of documentary films produced in Bollywood. Each year sees about 800 film releases, compared with about 600 in Hollywood, making the Indian cinema scene the largest in the world.