The cinema of India, consisting of motion pictures made by the Indian film industry, has had a large effect on world cinema since the second half of the 20th century. Indian cinema is made up of various film industries, each focused on producing films in a specific language, such as Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Assamese, Odia and others.
| Cinema of India | |
|---|---|
| No. of screens | 9,742 (2023) |
| • Per capita | 6 per million (2021) |
| Produced feature films (2021–2022) | |
| Total | 2886 |
| Number of admissions (2016) | |
| Total | 2,020,000,000 |
| • Per capita | 1.69 |
| National films | 1,713,600,000 |
| Gross box office (2024) | |
| Total | ₹11,833 crore ($1.36 billion) |
Major centres of film production across the country include Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Kochi, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar-Cuttack, and Guwahati. For a number of years, the Indian film industry has ranked first in the world in terms of annual film output. In 2024, Indian cinema earned ₹11, 833 crore ($1.36 billion) at the Indian box-office. Ramoji Film City located in Hyderabad is certified by the Guinness World Records as the largest film studio complex in the world measuring over 1,666 acres (674 ha).
Indian cinema is composed of multilingual and multi-ethnic film art. The term 'Bollywood', often mistakenly used to refer to Indian cinema as a whole, specifically denotes the Hindi-language film industry. Indian cinema, however, is an umbrella term encompassing multiple film industries, each producing films in its respective language and showcasing unique cultural and stylistic elements.
In 2021, Telugu cinema emerged as the largest film industry in India in terms of box office. In 2022, Hindi cinema represented 33% of box office revenue, followed by Telugu representing 20%, Tamil representing 16%, Bengali and Kannada representing 8%, and Malayalam representing 6%, with Marathi, Punjabi and Gujarati being the other prominent film industries based on revenue. As of 2022, the combined revenue of South Indian film industries has surpassed that of the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry (Bollywood). As of 2022, Telugu cinema leads Indian cinema with 23.3 crore (233 million) tickets sold, followed by Tamil cinema with 20.5 crore (205 million) and Hindi cinema with 18.9 crore (189 million).
Indian cinema is a global enterprise, and its films have attracted international attention and acclaim throughout South Asia. Since talkies began in 1931, Hindi cinema has led in terms of box office performance, but in recent years it has faced stiff competition from Telugu cinema. Overseas Indians account for 12% of the industry's revenue.
History
The history of cinema in India extends to the beginning of the film era. Following the public screening of the Lumière brothers' and Robert Paul's moving pictures in London in late 1895 and early 1896, respectively, commercial cinematography became a worldwide sensation and these films were shown in Bombay (now Mumbai) that same year.
Silent era (1890s–1920s)
From 1913 to 1931, all the movies made in India were silent films, which had no sound and had intertitles.
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In 1913, Dadasaheb Phalke released Raja Harishchandra (1913) in Bombay, the first film made in India. It was a silent film incorporating English, Marathi, and Hindi intertitles. Films steadily gained popularity across India as affordable entertainment for the masses (admission as low as an anna [one-sixteenth of a rupee] in Bombay). Young producers began to incorporate elements of Indian social life and culture into cinema, others brought new ideas from across the world. Global audiences and markets soon became aware of India's film industry.
In 1927, the British government, to promote the market in India for British films over American ones, formed the Indian Cinematograph Enquiry Committee. This committee failed to support the intended recommendations for promoting British film, instead recommending support for the fledgling Indian film industry. As a result, their suggestions were set aside.
Sound era
The first Indian sound film was Alam Ara (1931) made by Ardeshir Irani.
The first film studio in South India, Durga Cinetone, was built in 1936 by Nidamarthi Surayya in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh.[contradictory] The advent of sound to Indian cinema launched musicals such as Indra Sabha and Devi Devyani, marking the beginning of song-and-dance in Indian films. By 1935, studios emerged in major cities such as Madras, Calcutta and Bombay as filmmaking became an established industry, exemplified by the success of Devdas (1935). The first colour film made in India was Kisan Kanya (1937, Moti B).
Swamikannu Vincent, who had built the first cinema of South India in Coimbatore, introduced the concept of "tent cinema" in which a tent was erected on a stretch of open land to screen films. The first of its kind was in Madras and was called Edison’s Grand Cinema Megaphone, named for the electric carbons used in motion picture projectors.[further explanation needed] Bombay Talkies opened in 1934 and Prabhat Studios in Pune began production of Marathi films. However, while Indian filmmakers sought to tell important stories, the British Raj banned Wrath (1930) and Raithu Bidda (1938) for broaching the subject of the Indian independence movement.
The Indian Masala film—a term used for mixed-genre films that combined song, dance, romance, etc.—arose following the Second World War. During the 1940s, cinema in South India accounted for nearly half of India's cinema halls, and cinema came to be viewed as an instrument of cultural revival. The Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), an art movement with a communist inclination, began to take shape through the 1940s and the 1950s. IPTA plays, such as Nabanna (1944), prepared the ground for realism in Indian cinema, as seen in the films Mother India (1957) and Pyaasa (1957), among India's most recognisable cinematic productions.
Following independence, the 1947 partition of India divided the nation's assets and a number of studios moved to Pakistan. Partition became an enduring film subject thereafter. The Indian government had established a Films Division by 1948, which eventually became one of the world's largest documentary film producers.
Golden Age (late 1940s–1960s)
The period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s is regarded by film historians as the Golden Age of Indian cinema. This period saw the emergence of the parallel cinema movement, which emphasised social realism. Mainly led by Bengalis, it laid the foundations for Indian neorealism.
The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959, Satyajit Ray) won prizes at several major international film festivals and firmly established the parallel cinema movement. It was influential on world cinema and led to a rush of coming-of-age films in art house theatres.
During the 1950s, Indian cinema reportedly became the world's second largest film industry, earning a gross annual income of ₹250 million (equivalent to ₹26 billion or US$310 million in 2023) in 1953. The government created the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) in 1960 to provide financial support to filmmakers. While serving as Information and Broadcasting Minister of India in the 1960s, Indira Gandhi supported the production of off-beat cinema through the FFC. Commercial Hindi cinema began thriving, including acclaimed films Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959, Guru Dutt) Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955, Raj Kapoor). These films expressed social themes mainly dealing with working-class urban life in India.
Epic film Mother India (1957, Mehboob Khan) was the first Indian film to be nominated for the US-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film[citation needed] and defined the conventions of Hindi cinema for decades. It spawned a new genre of dacoit films. Gunga Jumna (1961, Dilip Kumar) was a dacoit crime drama about two brothers on opposite sides of the law, a theme that became common in Indian films in the 1970s.
Actor Dilip Kumar rose to fame in the 1950s, and was the biggest Indian movie star of the time. He was a pioneer of method acting, predating Hollywood method actors such as Marlon Brando. Much like Brando's influence on New Hollywood actors, Kumar inspired Hindi actors, including Amitabh Bachchan, Naseeruddin Shah, Shah Rukh Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
1970s–present
By 1986, India's annual film output had increased to 833 films annually, making India the world's largest film producer. Hindi film production of Bombay, the largest segment of the industry, became known as "Bollywood".
- Hindi (33.0%)
- Telugu (20.0%)
- Tamil (16.0%)
- Bengali (10.0%)
- Kannada (8.00%)
- Malayalam (6.00%)
- Other (7.00%)
By 1996, the Indian film industry had an estimated domestic cinema viewership of 600 million people, establishing India as one of the largest film markets, with the largest regional industries being Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil films. In 2001, in terms of ticket sales, Indian cinema sold an estimated 3.6 billion tickets annually across the globe, compared to Hollywood's 2.6 billion tickets sold.
Hindi
Realistic parallel cinema continued throughout the 1970s, practised in many Indian film cultures. The FFC's art film orientation came under criticism during a Committee on Public Undertakings investigation in 1976, which accused the body of not doing enough to encourage commercial cinema.
Hindi commercial cinema continued with films starring Rajesh Khanna such as Aradhana (1969), Sachaa Jhutha (1970), Haathi Mere Saathi (1971), Anand (1971), Kati Patang (1971) Amar Prem (1972), Dushman (1972) and Daag (1973).[importance?]
By the early 1970s, Hindi cinema was experiencing thematic stagnation, dominated by musical romance films. Screenwriter duo Salim–Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) revitalised the industry. They established the genre of gritty, violent, Bombay underworld crime films with Zanjeer (1973) and Deewaar (1975). They reinterpreted the rural themes of Mother India and Gunga Jumna in an urban context reflecting 1970s India, channelling the growing discontent and disillusionment among the masses, unprecedented growth of slums and urban poverty, corruption and crime, as well as anti-establishment themes. This resulted in their creation of the "angry young man", personified by Amitabh Bachchan, who reinterpreted Kumar's performance in Gunga Jumna and gave a voice to the urban poor. The women on the other hand were shown as ones who have adopted western values and outfits especially by heroines like Parveen Babi (who was featured on the cover of Time magazine for a story on Bollywood's success) and Zeenat Aman.
By the mid-1970s, Bachchan's position as a lead actor was solidified by crime-action films Zanjeer and Sholay (1975). The devotional classic Jai Santoshi Ma (1975) was made on a low budget and became a box office success and a cult classic. Another important film was Deewaar (1975, Yash Chopra), a crime film with brothers on opposite sides of the law which Danny Boyle described as "absolutely key to Indian cinema".
The term "Bollywood" was coined in the 1970s, when the conventions of commercial Bombay-produced Hindi films were established. Key to this was Nasir Hussain and Salim–Javed's creation of the masala film genre, which combines elements of action, comedy, romance, drama, melodrama and musical. Their film Yaadon Ki Baarat (1973) has been identified as the first masala film and the first quintessentially Bollywood film. Masala films made Bachchan the biggest Bollywood movie star of the period. Another landmark was Amar Akbar Anthony (1977, Manmohan Desai). Desai further expanded the genre in the 1970s and 1980s.
Commercial Hindi cinema grew in the 1980s, with films such as Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981), Disco Dancer (1982), Himmatwala (1983), Tohfa (1984), Naam (1986), Mr India (1987), and Tezaab (1988).
In the late 1980s,[timeframe?] Hindi cinema experienced another period of stagnation, with a decline in box office turnout, due to increasing violence, decline in musical melodic quality, and rise in video piracy, leading to middle-class family audiences abandoning theatres. The turning point came with Indian blockbuster Disco Dancer (1982) which began the era of disco music in Indian cinema. Lead actor Mithun Chakraborty and music director Bappi Lahiri had the highest number of mainstream Indian hit movies that decade. At the end of the decade, Yash Chopra's Chandni (1989) created a new formula for Bollywood musical romance films, reviving the genre and defining Hindi cinema in the years that followed. The film consolidated Sridevi's position as the biggest female star of the era. Commercial Hindi cinema grew in the late 1980s and 1990s, with the release of Mr. India (1987), Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Chaalbaaz (1989), Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Lamhe (1991), Saajan (1991), Khuda Gawah (1992), Khalnayak (1993), Darr (1993), Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994), Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), Pyar Kiya Toh Darna Kya (1998) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998). Cult classic Bandit Queen (1994) directed by Shekhar Kapur received international recognition and controversy.
In the late 1990s, there was a resurgence of parallel cinema in Bollywood, largely due to the critical and commercial success of crime films such as Satya (1998) and Vaastav (1999). These films launched a genre known as "Mumbai noir", reflecting social problems in the city. Ram Gopal Varma directed the Indian Political Trilogy, and the Indian Gangster Trilogy; film critic Rajeev Masand had labelled the latter series as one of the "most influential movies of Bollywood. The first instalment of the trilogy, Satya, was also listed in CNN-IBN's 100 greatest Indian films of all time.
Since the 1990s, the three biggest Bollywood movie stars have been the "Three Khans": Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Salman Khan. Combined, they starred in the top ten highest-grossing Bollywood films, and have dominated the Indian box office since the 1990s. Shah Rukh Khan was the most successful for most of the 1990s and 2000s, while Aamir Khan has been the most successful since the late 2000s; according to Forbes, Shah Rukh Khan is "arguably the world's biggest movie star" as of 2017, due to his immense popularity in India and China. Other notable Hindi film stars of recent decades include Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Anil Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan, Sanjay Dutt, Sunil Shetty and Sunny Deol among males and Aishwarya Rai, Juhi Chawla, Karisma Kapoor, Kajol, Madhuri Dixit, Preity Zinta, Rani Mukerji, Raveena Tandon, Sridevi, Tabu.
Haider (2014, Vishal Bhardwaj), the third instalment of the Indian Shakespearean Trilogy after Maqbool (2003) and Omkara (2006), won the People's Choice Award at the 9th Rome Film Festival in the Mondo Genere making it the first Indian film to achieve this honour.[relevant?]
The 2000s and 2010s also saw the rise of a new generation of popular actors like Shahid Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, Ayushmann Khurrana, Varun Dhawan, Sidharth Malhotra, Sushant Singh Rajput, Kartik Aaryan, Arjun Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapur and Tiger Shroff, as well as actresses like Vidya Balan, Priyanka Chopra, Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Kangana Ranaut, Deepika Padukone, Sonam Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Shraddha Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Parineeti Chopra and Kriti Sanon with Balan, Ranaut and Bhatt gaining wide recognition for successful female-centric films such as The Dirty Picture (2011), Kahaani (2012), Queen (2014), Highway (2014), Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015), Raazi (2018) and Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022).
Salim–Javed were highly influential in South Indian cinema. In addition to writing two Kannada films, many of their Bollywood films had remakes produced in other regions, including Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam cinema. While the Bollywood directors and producers held the rights to their films in Northern India, Salim–Javed retained the rights in South India, where they sold remake rights for films such as Zanjeer, Yaadon Ki Baarat and Don. Several of these remakes became breakthroughs for actor Rajinikanth.
Sridevi is widely regarded as the first female superstar of Indian cinema due to her pan-Indian appeal with equally successful careers in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu cinema. She is the only Bollywood actor to have starred in a top 10 grossing film each year of her active career (1983–1997).[citation needed]
In 2024, regional film industries collectively accounted for around 60 % of India’s box office share, with Hindi cinema’s contribution falling to 40 %, reflecting a notable shift in audience preferences toward regional-language films including Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Gujarati cinema
Telugu
K. V. Reddy's Mayabazar (1957) is a landmark film in Indian cinema, a classic of Telugu cinema that inspired generations of filmmakers. It blends myth, fantasy, romance and humour in a timeless story, captivating audiences with its fantastical elements. The film excelled in various departments like cast performances, production design, music, cinematography and is particularly revered for its use of technology. The use of special effects, innovative for the 1950s, like the first illusion of moonlight, showcased technical brilliance.. Powerful performances and relatable themes ensure Mayabazar stays relevant, a classic enjoyed by new generations. On the centenary of Indian cinema in 2013, CNN-IBN included Mayabazar in its list of "100 greatest Indian films of all time". In a poll conducted by CNN-IBN among those 100 films, Mayabazar was voted by the public as the "Greatest Indian film of all time".
K. Viswanath, one of the prominent auteurs of Indian cinema, he received international recognition for his works, and is known for blending parallel cinema with mainstream cinema. His works such as Sankarabharanam (1980) about revitalisation of Indian classical music won the "Prize of the Public" at the Besançon Film Festival of France in the year 1981. Forbes included J. V. Somayajulu's performance in the film on its list of "25 Greatest Acting Performances of Indian Cinema". Swathi Muthyam (1986) was India's official entry to the 59th Academy Awards. Swarna Kamalam (1988) the dance film choreographed by Kelucharan Mohapatra, and Sharon Lowen was featured at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, fetching three Indian Express Awards.
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