Film made in the Kannada language comes from what is
known as the Sandalwood film industry; just as Hindi
films emerge from Bollywood. While most of the films are
made in Kannada, there are a few exceptions to films
being made in Konkani and Tulu, making Kannada cinema an
important aspect of Indian cinema. The most noted actor
to emerge from Kannada films was Dr. Rajkumar. He was
well known for his captivating voice and versatile
acting abilities.
Others who have received many
accolades include Vishnu Vardhan, Gubbi Veeranna, Balakrishna, Puttanna
Kanagal, Prabhakar , Lokesh, Anant Nag, Girish Karnad,
Manjula, Ravichandran, Narasimharaju and Dwarakesh.
Kannada cinema has lost many of its most talented stars
on grounds of different reasons such as accidents and
people fading off screen such as Soundarya, Kalpana,
Manjula, Suneel and others. However due to lack of
studios and technical crews, financers backed away from
film projects in the early stages of Kannada cinema.
Sati Sulochana released in 1934 has the credit of
being the first talky film in Kannada. The 1950's saw
the emergence of Dr. Rajkumar. He formed a partnership
with two others to produce more Kannada films, but the
partnership lasted for a few years before withering
away. Most films during this era revolved around
mythology and historic events. The golden period of
Kannada cinema was seen during the 1970's and 80's where
along with Bengali and Malayalam cinema, the emergence
of parallel cinema took place in Kannada cinema as well.
Films like Kaadu, Samskara, Hamsageethe, Ondanondu
Kaladalli, Chomana Dudi were some of the important films
to emerge from this era.
Girish Kasaravalli, is considered to be the pioneer
behind New Wave Cinema in Karnataka. He has won the
National award for best film four times. With the
government of Karnataka in the 1980's awarding a 50 per
cent tax exempt fee for films made in all its entirety
in Karnataka, more interest was generated, bringing in
much needed revenue into the Kannada film industry.
Shivarajkumar started off his film career with one
success after another. Other stars who shone in the
spotlight were Vanitha Vasu, Devaraj, Jaggesh, Lokanath
and Anjana.
The 21st century saw the coming of a fresh wave of
talent like Shashikumar, Ramesh Aravind, Malashri,
Darshan and Sudeep. Many artists from other film
industries have dabbled in Sandalwood too, such as
Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Mani Ratnam and Kamal
Hassan, while actors like Prabhu Deva and Atul Kulkarni
moved to other film industries like Bollywood. In recent
years the industry has had a great revival even at the
box office churning out one hit after the other such as
Mungaru Male and Jogi.
