History of cinema in India

India produces the maximum number of movies per year, (1200 for the year 2002) although most of them are commercial flops. Thus Indian film is potentially the only competitor for the western Hollywood.

Commercial Indian films are considered to be melodramatic and long with plenty of music. Filmi music play a significant role in Indian movies.

Notable Indian movie makers:

• Satyajit Ray
• Shekhar Kapur
• Mrinal Sen
• Shyam Benegal
• Bimal Roy
• Adoor Gopalakrishnan
• Guru Dutt
• Dr.K.Viswanath
• Mani Ratnam
• Meera Nair
• K. Balachander
• Ram Gopal Verma

Notable Indian actors/actresses:

• Amitabh Bachchan
• Raj Kapoor
• Dilip Kumar
• Sivaji Ganesan
• NT Rama Rao
• Savitri
• Kamal Hassan
• Naseeruddin Shah
• Om Puri
• Shabana Azmi
• Amrish Puri
• Aamir Khan
• Mohan Lal
• Mammootty
• Nutan

Notable Indian Filmi music composers:

• Naushad
• SD Burman
• RD Burman
• Salil Choudary
• KV Mahadevan
• Ghantasala
• AR Rahman
• Jatin Lalit
• Ilayaraja

The film industry is referred with different names in different parts of the country:

• Bollywood (Hindi film industry - the Indian "Hollywood")
• Kollywood (refers to Tamil film industry)
• Mollywood (refers to Malayalam film industry)
• Tollywood (refers either to Bengali or Telugu film industry)

See also: History of cinema