What is Bollywood?
Bollywood is the name given to the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry in India. When combined with other Indian film industries (Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada), it is considered to be the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced, and maybe also the number of tickets sold. The term Bollywood was created by conflating Bombay (the city now called Mumbai) and Hollywood (the famous center of the United States film industry). Bollywood films are usually musicals. Few movies are made without at least one song-and-dance number. Indian audiences expect full value for their money; they want songs and dances, love interest, comedy and dare-devil thrills, all mixed up in a three hour long extravaganza with intermission. Such movies are called masala movies, after the spice mixture masala. Like masala, these movies have everything. The plots are often melodramatic. They frequently employ formulaic ingredients such as star-crossed lovers, corrupt politicians, twi
2002 was the year it all kicked off for Bollywood in Britain. A season of Indian films was shown on TV when India and England played in a big cricket tournament. Bombay Dreams, a new West End musical, was a sell out. Special cinemas also showed Bollywood classic films and had exhibitions featuring Bollywood film posters. Lagaan, a huge Bollywood hit, was nominated for an Oscar. The music charts were full of Bhangra, with Timbaland, Dr Dre and the Neptunes sampling Indian beats and Punjabi MC having several big hits. Bollywood films have managed to cross over and now it’s not just Indian families watching them – they’re being shown in big cinemas across the UK.
Bollywood is the nickname given to the Indian film industry – it’s a play on the word Hollywood. The B comes from Bombay (also known as Mumbai), a big city in India. Bollywood is massive. It makes up to 800 films a year – twice as many as Hollywood and about 14 million Indian people go to the cinema everyday Films are made so fast that sometimes actors on set shoot scenes for four different films at a time – using the same actors and the same backgrounds. And sometimes the scripts are even hand-written!
