PRANAV- Bollywood is generally the first thing to pop into the general worldwide audience's minds when they hear "Indian cinema," accompanied by images of lavish and brightly colored traditional costumes, elaborate dance sequences, and often even more epic fight sequences that allow the audience to throw out the laws of physics along with their empty bags of popcorn. Beyond this surface level profile, however, lies a deep history and distinction of films of innumerable styles, genres, and themes. India is a land of many languages, and thus the first and most important thing to know about Indian Cinema as a whole is that it is not just one overlapping umbrella film industry for the entire country, but a system of multiple regional industries for each regional language throughout the nation. Each state in the country has its own distinct film industry, its own set of artists and technicians, and its own style of filmmaking and storytelling to cater the audiences of that individual state. Bollywood refers strictly to Hindi language films, which are the most widely distributed and thus most widely spoken about internationally. Beyond that, there are the industries of Tollywood (for the language of Telugu, spoken in the states of Andhra Pradhesh and Telengana), Kollywood (representing the language of Tamil, spoken in the state of Tamilnadu), Mollywood (for Malayalam-speaking audiences hailing from the state of Kerala) and many more. I’ll be focusing mainly on Tamil cinema in this post, with the intent of providing you, the reader, with a decent idea of how the rest of these industries work and how they’ve grown so as to understand the vast diversity of Indian cinema as a whole.
The division of Indian cinema into various regional industries has led India to produce more movies per year than any other country in the world, with each language producing an average of over 200 films per year of its own. Each industry has its own films that have achieved outstanding critical acclaim and have reached the eyes of critics and the stages of prestigious film festivals worldover. Within these industries, however, lies a very obvious sense of duality between various elements of how the films themselves are made. Of these, the most prominent partnership is that of politics and cinema, regarding what is being told on screen and what is being received off screen. To explain this phenomenon, let’s take a look at a southern state where politics and cinema have gone hand in hand in a more distinguished fashion than anywhere else, Tamilnadu. The first talking Tamil motion pictures released in the 1930s, and by the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were two intense rivalries that nobody in the state could ignore. First was the rivalry between actor M.G. Ramachandran and screenwriter and poet Karunanidhi. MGR and Karunanidhi were a very popular actor-writer duo from the humble beginnings of their careers together, and as their popularity and their audience grew wider, Karunanidhi, who was already very politically involved and aimed his efforts toward the uplifting of lower caste citizens into the ranks of the government, began to allow more and more of his views to seep into the dialogues that MGR uttered with all his righteous charisma on screen. As it was, MGR had touched countless hearts in Tamilnadu with unimaginable influence, and with time, grew to attain a position of unparalleled stardom. Noticing his power, Karunanidhi lured MGR into joining his political party and MGR began to portray a do-gooder who inspired hundreds of thousands with his thought provoking messages with hints of political ideologies teaching the audience how to live their lives productively while benefitting society, which only helped boost his image as a leader. Eventually, the political agendas of Karunanidhi and MGR clashed, and the duo departed from cinema to form their own parties, and competed for the seat of Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, a rivalry which raged on for decades to come. To this day, the feud continues, as MGR passed the torch on to Jayalalitha, another former actress, after his demise in 1987. This rivalry and format of storytelling also spurred the trend of social messages being intertwined into the tongues of Tamil cinema’s leading characters, who are more widely referred to as “heroes,” and would be recognized as a sort of cultural tradition for conventional filmmakers to follow, which eventually evolved into the stereotypical “song → fight → comedy → sentiment → song → fight” formula.
The division of Indian cinema into various regional industries has led India to produce more movies per year than any other country in the world, with each language producing an average of over 200 films per year of its own. Each industry has its own films that have achieved outstanding critical acclaim and have reached the eyes of critics and the stages of prestigious film festivals worldover. Within these industries, however, lies a very obvious sense of duality between various elements of how the films themselves are made. Of these, the most prominent partnership is that of politics and cinema, regarding what is being told on screen and what is being received off screen. To explain this phenomenon, let’s take a look at a southern state where politics and cinema have gone hand in hand in a more distinguished fashion than anywhere else, Tamilnadu. The first talking Tamil motion pictures released in the 1930s, and by the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were two intense rivalries that nobody in the state could ignore. First was the rivalry between actor M.G. Ramachandran and screenwriter and poet Karunanidhi. MGR and Karunanidhi were a very popular actor-writer duo from the humble beginnings of their careers together, and as their popularity and their audience grew wider, Karunanidhi, who was already very politically involved and aimed his efforts toward the uplifting of lower caste citizens into the ranks of the government, began to allow more and more of his views to seep into the dialogues that MGR uttered with all his righteous charisma on screen. As it was, MGR had touched countless hearts in Tamilnadu with unimaginable influence, and with time, grew to attain a position of unparalleled stardom. Noticing his power, Karunanidhi lured MGR into joining his political party and MGR began to portray a do-gooder who inspired hundreds of thousands with his thought provoking messages with hints of political ideologies teaching the audience how to live their lives productively while benefitting society, which only helped boost his image as a leader. Eventually, the political agendas of Karunanidhi and MGR clashed, and the duo departed from cinema to form their own parties, and competed for the seat of Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, a rivalry which raged on for decades to come. To this day, the feud continues, as MGR passed the torch on to Jayalalitha, another former actress, after his demise in 1987. This rivalry and format of storytelling also spurred the trend of social messages being intertwined into the tongues of Tamil cinema’s leading characters, who are more widely referred to as “heroes,” and would be recognized as a sort of cultural tradition for conventional filmmakers to follow, which eventually evolved into the stereotypical “song → fight → comedy → sentiment → song → fight” formula.
 MGR and Karunanidhi |  MGR and Jayalalitha |  Jayalalitha |
The second rivalry which held the institution of Tamil cinema together was that of MGR and Sivaji Ganesan. MGR, as mentioned before, was the star, the hero, the ultimate Tamilian, whose true character always reflected in the characters he played on screen, and thus roped in family audiences that could teach their children to lead their lives like he did, as they all rooted for him to lead Tamilnadu into a better tomorrow. Ganesan, on the other hand, was the performer, the artist, the man who could bring audiences to tears with his acting, and whose films taught the importance of the family values. The sheer power of his acting was unquestionable and led him to worldwide acclaim, as he became the first Indian to be awarded the title of a Chevalier by the Order of Arts and Letters of France. Each of these actors captivated as many hearts and minds of the Tamil audience as their counterpart, but the stark contrast between their films branded their careers and the future of Tamil cinema forever. Even their screen names paralleled their rivalry, with Sivaji owning the title of “Nadigar Thilagam” meaning “the pride of actors,” while MGR claimed the title of “Makkal Thilagam” meaning “the pride of the people.” The vast difference of their respective styles of storytelling led Tamil cinema itself to grow into a race between commercial cinema, which caters to families and children seeking overall unadulterated entertainment, and progressive cinema, which aims to advance Tamil cinema in terms of storytelling, style, techniques, and technology in persistent efforts to help it reach a global standard. Commercial, or “mass” cinema, tends to shield the audience from things contrasting with the views and values and common storytelling techniques thriving inside the bubble that is Tamil culture, while progressive, or “class” cinema, tends to introduce the audience to a sense of realism in its ways of filmmaking, which is often inspired by world cinema.
 Sivaji Ganesan in "Satyam" (1976) |  MGR in "Ulagam Sutrum Valiban" (1973) |
The clash between the stars and the performers have continued since the days of MGR and Sivaji, first succeeded in the late 70’s and into present day by Rajinikanth, the Super Star, and Kamal Haasan, the next Chevalier, along with the credits of writer, director and producer, and whose films have been selected as India’s entry for consideration for Best Foreign Language film at the Academy Awards a whopping seven times. Every South Indian film industry has its heroes and its actors, and I feel it is an age old battle that may never have an outright winner. Even technicians differ in their own respective fields; for every “masala” movie from Hari or Lingusamy following the rise of an ordinary boy next door into a valiant hero, we get an in-depth exploration of relationships in the form of a Mani Ratnam film. For every hero-praising intro folk song from DSP, we get a soul stirring piece from AR Rahman, or an EDM love track from Anirudh.
top row: Baashha, Bombay // middle row: Indru Netru Naalai, Vellai Illa Pattadhaari, Kaaka Muttai // bottom row: OK Kanmani, Baahubali
With the migration of more Indians across the globe, the roles of distributors in film industries have become that much more important. Orchestrating the spread of a film to every corner of the world where an Indian may reside, distributors deal with the producers to get copies of a film in mass bulk and get them where they need to go, and this has helped with millions of Indians around the world stay connected with their culture and watch it grow.
Pranav is an incoming freshman at Texas A&M University. He will be studying mass media and communications.
