The Indian film industry is the oldest and the largest in the world with over 1200 movies released annually. The majority of films are made in the South Indian languages mostly Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam, but Hindi films take the largest box office share. Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), Kolkata (Calcutta), Bangalore and Hyderabad are the main film production centers. With more than12000 cinema halls, the Indian film industry turn out more than 1000 films a year to hugely appreciative audiences around the world.
The first exposure to motion pictures that India received was when the Lumiere Brothers' Cinematographe unveiled six soundless short films, on July 7, 1896, at the Watson Hotel in Mumbai.The first exposing of celluloid in a camera by an Indian and its consequent screening took place in 1899, when Save Dada shot two short films and exhibited them under Edison's projecting kinetoscope. As the early 1900s rolled in, with the country poised for major social and political reforms, a new entertainment form dawned in India -- the cinema.
Dadasaheb Phalke -- a man of versatile talent, who had a varied career as a painter, photographer, playwright and magician before he took to film -- was responsible for the production of India's first fully indigenous silent feature film, Raja Harishchandra, adapted from the Mahabharata.The film had titles in Hindi and English, and was released on May 3, 1913 at the Coronation Cinema in Mumbai. This laid the foundation of what, in time, would grow to become the largest film producing industry in the world. After stepping into 1920, Indian cinema gradually assumed the shape of a regular industry, producing silent films and also coming within the purview of the law. The new decade saw the arrival of many new companies and filmmakers. Directors such as Dhiren Ganguly, Baburao Painter, Suchet Singh, Chandulal Shah, Ardershir Irani and V Shantaram were among the early pioneers. The increased profitability of the cinema enabled filmmakers to reinvest their gains in new productions and additional infrastructure such as studios, laboratories and theatres. By 1925, Mumbai had already become India's cinema capital. The most remarkable thing about the birth of the sound film in India is it came with a bang and quickly displaced silent movies.
The first Indian talkie, Alam Ara (1931) was a 124-minute feature produced by the Imperial Film Company in Mumbai and directed by Ardershir Irani. Advertised as an all talking, all singing, all dancing film, it brought revolutionary changes in the whole set up of the industry The 1930s are recognised as a decade of social protest in the history of Indian cinema. Three big banner production companies -- Prabhat, Bombay Talkies and New Theatres -- took the lead in making gripping but entertaining films for all classes. A number of films that made a strong plea against social injustice were produced in this period, specifically some by V Shantaram. V Shantaram's illustrious career spanned seven decades from the 1920s to 1986. He was arguably the most innovative and ambitious filmmaker in the industry's history, creating 105 films as a director, producer and actor. His first talkie and bilingual film in 1932, Ayodhye Cha Raja, was about a legendary Indian king loved by all his subjects and remembered for his fairness Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), for instance, focused on political themes and social critique within a pop culture setting. The 1960s began with a bang with the release of K Asif's Mughal-E-Azam, which set a box-office record. An epic about Prince Salim, son of the Emperor Akbar, and his forbidden romance with court dancer Anarkali, it was one of the most expensive films to produce at the time and took 10 years to make.
