Bollywood

Bollywood is the commonly-used name for the Hindi film industry. Even if you have never actually seen an Indian film, you already have an approximate idea of what they look like: massive production including songs and dances in unexpected places, simplistic storylines, heavy melodrama, etc.

India's national cinema is one of the country's most important industries because of the money it moves.

The name "Bollywood" is a compound word derived from Bombay (the former name for Mumbai), and hollywood, the center of the American film industry. But, contrary to Hollywood, Bollywood does not exist as a physical place.

Indian dates from 1913 and the silent film Raja Harishchandra, the first-ever Indian film. Its producer, Dadasaheb Phalke, was Indian cinema’s first magnate, and supervised the production of twenty-three films between 1913-1918.

Around 1947 the industry went through significant changes, during this time the the modern Indian film was born. At that time  films started to be Inspired by social and political changes, as well as cinematic movements in both the US and Europe, the 1960s saw the birth of India’s New Wave, founded by directors such as Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak.

Nowadays Bollywood is known as the Masala film, thanks to Manmohan Desai, one of the more successful Bollywood directors of the 1970s who is considered by many to be the father of this Masala film. He defended his posture like this: “I want people to forget their misery. I want to take them into a dream world where there is no poverty, where there are no beggars, where fate is kind and god is busy looking after his flock.”