The Indian film industry has a huge fan base not only at
home but also abroad, especially in countries which have
a significant Indian population. The term Bollywood is a
term coined for the Hindi-language film industry set in
Bombay, India. Bollywood is often incorrectly referred
to the whole of Indian Cinema. It is in fact just a part
of the film industry.
The introduction of Cinema in
India began with the Lumiere Brothers' screening six
silent short films at the Watson Hotel in Bombay. In
1910, Dadasaheb Phalke attended a screening of The Life
of Christ at P.B. Mehta's American - Indian Cinema and
decided to become a filmmaker himself. His first silent
film Raja Harishchandra was released in 1913. The first
Indian feature film with sound was Ardeshir Irani's Alam
Ara (1931) which became a super hit. The period between
the 1930's and 1940's saw a great number of social
upheavals and the partitioning of India. While most
filmmakers chose the easy way out, there were some
directors who embarked upon various social issues and
used the freedom movement as a backdrop for their
scripts.
The 1950's brought with it colour films, yet people
continued to ardently follow black and white films till
the mid-1960s. Story plots usually revolved around
romance and melodramatic themes. Success stories from
this generation include actors like Dilip Kumar, Nargis,
Madhubala, Nutan, Raj Kapoor, Meena Kumari, and Dev
Anand. Directors soon changed focus from romance in the
1960's to action films with stars like Dharmendra, Anil
Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Jaya Bachchan and
Rekha. This trend continued till the early 1990's.
The 1990's saw the focus of films shifting back to
family-centric love stories. Successful films of that
period include Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (1994) and Dilwale
Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995). The actors noted for their
performance and who later on went on to bag bigger and
better roles include Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Shahrukh
Khan and actresses like Madhuri Dixit and Kajol. At the
same time comedy and action films continued to hold the
audience's attention with popular actors such as Govinda,
Akshay Kumar, Raveena Tandon and Karisma Kapoor.
Independent art films slowly started succeeding
commercially around this time as well.
In 2000 Bollywood started garnering attention
overseas due to box office hits such as Devdas, Kal Ho
Naa Ho, Dhoom 2, while delivering a whole new generation
of fresh young faces such as Aishwarya Rai, Hrithik
Roshan, Preity Zinta and Rani Mukerji.
