Bollywood

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This article is about the film industry of Hindi films. For the entire film culture of India, see Cinema of India. For the similarly named tree species, see Litsea reticulata and Litsea bindoniana.
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Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based inMumbai (formerly known as Bombay), Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing films in regional languages.[1] Bollywood is the largest film producer in India and one of the largest centers of film production in the world.[2][3][4] Bollywood is formally referred to as Hindi cinema.[5] There has been a growing presence ofIndian English in dialogue and songs as well. It is common to see films that feature dialogue with English words (also known as Hinglish), phrases, or even whole sentences.[6]
Contents
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1 Etymology 2 History

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2.1 Golden Age 2.2 Modern cinema

3 Influences for Bollywood 4 Influence of Bollywood 5 Genre conventions 6 Cast and crew 7 Sound 8 Bollywood song and dance 9 Dialogues and lyrics 10 Finances 11 Advertising 12 Awards 13 Film education 14 Popularity and appeal

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14.1 Africa 14.2 Asia 14.3 Europe

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14.4 North America 14.5 Oceania 14.6 South America

15 Plagiarism 16 See also 17 References 18 Further reading 19 External links

Etymology
The name "Bollywood" is derived from Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry.[7]However, unlike Hollywood, Bollywood does not exist as a physical place. Though some deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood,[7][8] it has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. The naming scheme for "Bollywood" was inspired by "Tollywood", the name that was used to refer to the cinema of West Bengal. Dating back to 1932, "Tollywood" was the earliest Hollywood-inspired name, referring to the Bengali film industry based in Tollygunge, whose name is reminiscent of "Hollywood" and was the center of the cinema of India at the time.[9] It was this "chance juxtaposition of two pairs of rhyming syllables," Holly and Tolly, that led to the name "Tollywood" being coined. The name "Tollywood" went on to be used as a nickname for the Bengali film industry by the popular Kolkata-based Junior Statesman youth magazine, establishing a precedent for other film industries to use similar-sounding names, eventually leading to the term "Bollywood" being coined.[10] The term "Bollywood" itself has origins in the 1970s, when India overtook America as the world's largest film producer. Credit for the term has been claimed by several different people, including the lyricist, filmmaker and scholar Amit Khanna,[11] and the journalist Bevinda Collaco.[12]

History

Film poster for first Indian sound film,Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931)

Guru Dutt (1925-1964)

Raja Harishchandra (1913), by Dadasaheb Phalke, was the first silent feature film made in India. By the 1930s, the industry was producing over 200 films per annum.[13] The first Indian sound film,Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931), was a major commercial success.[14] There was clearly a huge market for talkies and musicals; Bollywood and all the regional film industries quickly switched to sound filming. The 1930s and 1940s were tumultuous times: India was buffeted by the Great Depression, World War II, the Indian independence movement, and the violence of the Partition. Most Bollywood films were

unabashedly escapist, but there were also a number of filmmakers who tackled tough social issues, or used the struggle for Indian independence as a backdrop for their plots.[13] In 1937, Ardeshir Irani, of Alam Ara fame, made the first colour film in Hindi, Kisan Kanya. The next year, he made another colour film, a version of Mother India. However, colour did not become a popular feature until the late 1950s. At this time, lavish romantic musicals and melodramas were the staple fare at the cinema.

Golden Age
Following India's independence, the period from the late 1940s to the 1960s is regarded by film historians as the "Golden Age" of Hindi cinema.[15][16][17] Some of the most critically acclaimed Hindi films of all time were produced during this period. Examples include the Guru Dutt films Pyaasa(1957) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) and the Raj Kapoor films Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955). These films expressed social themes mainly dealing with working-class urban life in India; Awaarapresented the city as both a nightmare and a dream, while Pyaasa critiqued the unreality of city life.[18] Some of the most famous epic films of Hindi cinema were also produced at the time, includingMehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,[19] and K. Asif's Mughal-eAzam (1960).[20] Madhumati (1958), directed by Bimal Royand written by Ritwik Ghatak, popularized the theme of reincarnation in Western popular culture.[21]Other acclaimed mainstream Hindi filmmakers at the time included Kamal Amrohi and Vijay Bhatt. Successful actors at the time included Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt, while successful actresses included Nargis, Vyjayanthimala, Meena Kumari, Nutan, Madhubala, Waheeda Rehman and Mala Sinha.[22] While commercial Hindi cinema was thriving, the 1950s also saw the emergence of a new Parallel Cinema movement.[18] Though the movement was mainly led by Bengali cinema, it also began gaining prominence in Hindi cinema. Early examples of Hindi films in this movement include Chetan Anand'sNeecha Nagar (1946)[23] and Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953). Their critical acclaim, as well as the latter's commercial success, paved the way for Indian neorealism[24] and the Indian New Wave.[25]Some of the internationally acclaimed Hindi filmmakers involved in the movement included Mani Kaul,Kumar Shahani, Ketan Mehta, Govind Nihalani, Shyam Benegal and Vijaya Mehta.[18] Ever since the social realist film Neecha Nagar won the Grand Prize at the first Cannes Film Festival,[23] Hindi films were frequently in competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, with some of them winning major prizes at the festival.[26] Guru Dutt, while overlooked in his own lifetime, had belatedly generated international recognition much later in the 1980s.[26][27] Dutt is now regarded as one of the greatest Asian filmmakers of all time, alongside the more famous Indian Bengali filmmakerSatyajit Ray. The 2002 Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll of greatest filmmakers ranked Dutt at #73 on the list.[28] Some of his films are now included among the greatest films of all time, with Pyaasa (1957) being featured in Time magazine's "All-TIME" 100 best movieslist,[29] and with both Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke

Phool (1959) tied at #160 in the 2002 Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll of all-time greatest films. Several other Hindi films from this era were also ranked in the Sight & Sound poll, including Raj Kapoor's Awaara (1951), Vijay Bhatt's Baiju Bawra (1952), Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957) and K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam (1960) all tied at #346 on the list.[30]

Modern cinema
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, romance movies and action films starred actors like Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar andShashi Kapoor and actresses like Sharmila Tagore, Mumtaz and Asha Parekh. In the mid-1970s, romantic confections made way for gritty, violent films about gangsters (see Indian mafia) and bandits. Amitabh Bachchan, the star known for his "angry young man" roles, rode the crest of this trend with actors like Mithun Chakraborty and Anil Kapoor, which lasted into the early 1990s. Actresses from this era includedHema Malini, Jaya Bachchan and Rekha.[22] Some Hindi filmmakers such as Shyam Benegal continued to produce realistic Parallel Cinema throughout the 1970s,[31] alongside Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Ketan Mehta, Govind Nihalani and Vijaya Mehta.[18] However, the 'art film' bent of the Film Finance Corporation came under criticism during a Committee on Public Undertakings investigation in 1976, which accused the body of not doing enough to encourage commercial cinema. The 1970s thus saw the rise of commercial cinema in the form of enduring films such as Sholay (1975), which solidified Amitabh Bachchan's position as a lead actor. The devotional classic Jai Santoshi Ma was also released in 1975.[32] Another important film from 1975 was Deewar, directed by Yash Chopra and written by Salim-Javed. A crime film pitting "a policeman against his brother, a gang leader based on real-life smuggler Haji Mastan", portrayed by Amitabh Bachchan, it was described as being absolutely key to Indian cinema by Danny Boyle.[33] The most internationally acclaimed Hindi film of the 1980s was Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! (1988), which won the Camera d'Or at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the pendulum swung back toward family-centric romantic musicals with the success of such films asQayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (1994) and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), making stars out of a new generation of actors (such as Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan) and actresses (such as Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit, Juhi Chawla and Kajol).[22] In that point of time, action and comedy films were also successful, with actors like Govinda and actresses such as Raveena Tandon and Karisma Kapoor appearing in popular comedy films, and stunt actor Akshay Kumar gaining popularity forperforming dangerous stunts in action films.[34][35] Furthermore, this decade marked the entry of new performers in arthouse and independent films, some of which succeeded commercially, the most influential example being Satya (1998), directed by Ram Gopal Varma and written by Anurag Kashyap. The critical and commercial success of Satya led to the emergence of a distinct genre known as Mumbai noir,[36] urban films reflecting social problems in the city

of Mumbai.[37] This led to a resurgence of Parallel Cinema by the end of the decade.[36] These films often featured actors like Nana Patekar, Manoj Bajpai, Manisha Koirala, Tabu and Urmila Matondkar, whose performances were usually critically acclaimed. The 2000s saw a growth in Bollywood's popularity in the world. This led the nation's filmmaking to new heights in terms of quality, cinematography and innovative story lines as well as technical advances in areas such as special effects, animation, and so on.[38] Some of the largest production houses, among them Yash Raj Films and Dharma Productions were the producers of new modern films.[38] The opening up of the overseas market, more Bollywood releases abroad and the explosion of multiplexes in big cities, led to wider box office successes in India and abroad, including Lagaan (2001), Devdas (2002), Koi... Mil Gaya (2003), Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), Veer-Zaara (2004),Rang De Basanti (2006), Lage Raho Munnabhai (2006), Krrish (2006), Dhoom 2 (2006), Om Shanti Om (2007), Chak De India (2007), Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008), Ghajini (2008), 3 Idiots (2009), My Name is Khan (2010),Dabangg (2010) and The Dirty Picture delivering a new generation of popular actors (Hrithik Roshan, Abhishek Bachchan) and actresses (Aishwarya Rai, Preity Zinta, Rani Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and Vidya Balan[39][40]), and keeping the popularity of actors of the previous decade. Among the mainstream films,Lagaan won the Audience Award at the Locarno International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 74th Academy Awards, while Devdas and Rang De Basanti were both nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Hindi film industry has preferred films that appeal to all segments of the audience (see the discussion in Ganti, 2004, cited in references), and has resisted making films that target narrow audiences. It was believed that aiming for a broad spectrum would maximise box office receipts. However, filmmakers may be moving towards accepting some box-office segmentation, between films that appeal to rural Indians, and films that appeal to urban and overseas audiences.

Influences for Bollywood

Gokulsing and Dissanayake identify six major influences that have shaped the conventions of Indian popular cinema:[41]

The ancient Indian epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana which have exerted a profound influence on the thought and imagination of Indian popular cinema, particularly in its narratives. Examples of this influence include the techniques of a side story, back-story and story within a story. Indian popular films often have plots which branch off into sub-plots; such narrative dispersals can clearly be seen in the 1993 films Khalnayak and Gardish.[41]

Ancient Sanskrit drama, with its highly stylized nature and emphasis on spectacle, where music, dance and gesture combined "to create a vibrant artistic unit with dance and mime being

central to the dramatic experience." Sanskrit dramas were known as natya, derived from the root word nrit (dance), characterizing them as specacular dance-dramas which has continued Indian cinema.[41] The theory of rasa dating back to ancient Sanskrit drama is believed to be one of the most fundamental features that differentiate Indian cinema, particularly Hindi cinema, from that of the Western world.[42]

The traditional folk theatre of India, which became popular from around the 10th century with the decline of Sanskrit theatre. These regional traditions include the Yatra of Bengal, the Ramlila of Uttar Pradesh, and the Terukkuttu of Tamil Nadu.[41]

The Parsi theatre, which "blended realism and fantasy, music and dance, narrative and spectacle, earthy dialogue and ingenuity of stage presentation, integrating them into a dramatic discourse of melodrama. The Parsi plays contained crude humour, melodious songs and music, sensationalism and dazzling stagecraft."[41]

Hollywood, where musicals were popular from the 1920s to the 1950s, though Indian filmmakers departed from their Hollywood counterparts in several ways. "For example, the Hollywood musicals had as their plot the world of entertainment itself. Indian filmmakers, while enhancing the elements of fantasy so pervasive in Indian popular films, used song and music as a natural mode of articulation in a given situation in their films. There is a strong Indian tradition of narrating mythology, history, fairy stories and so on through song and dance." In addition, "whereas Hollywood filmmakers strove to conceal the constructed nature of their work so that the realistic narrative was wholly dominant, Indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction. However, they demonstrated how this creation intersected with people's day to day lives in complex and interesting ways."[41]

Western musical television, particularly MTV, which has had an increasing influence since the 1990s, as can be seen in the pace, camera angles, dance sequences and music of 2000s Indian films. An early example of this approach was in Mani Ratnam's Bombay(1995).[41]

Influence of Bollywood
In the 2000s, Bollywood began influencing musical films in the Western world, and played a particularly instrumental role in the revival of the American musical film genre. Baz Luhrmann stated that his musical film Moulin Rouge! (2001) was directly inspired by Bollywood musicals.[43] The film incorporated an Indianthemed play based on the ancient Sanskrit drama The Little Clay Cart and a Bollywood-style dance sequence with a song from the film China Gate. The critical and financial success of Moulin Rouge! renewed interest in the then-moribund Western musical genre, and subsequently films such as Chicago, The Producers, Rent, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, Sweeney Todd,Across the Universe, The Phantom of the Opera, Enchanted and Mamma Mia! were produced, fueling a renaissance of the genre.[44][45]

A. R. Rahman, an Indian film composer, wrote the music for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams, and a musical version of Hum Aapke Hain Koun has played in London's West End. The Bollywood musical Lagaan (2001) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and two other Bollywood films Devdas (2002) and Rang De Basanti (2006) were nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008), which has won four Golden Globes and eight Academy Awards, was also directly inspired by Bollywood films,[33][46] and is considered to be a "homage to Hindi commercial cinema".[23] The theme of reincarnationwas also popularized in Western popular culture through Bollywood films, with Madhumati (1958) inspiring the Hollywood film The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975),[21] which in turn inspired the Bollywood film Karz (1980), which in turn influenced another Hollywood filmChances Are (1989).[47] The 1975 film Chhoti Si Baat is believed to have inspired Hitch (2005), which in turn inspired the Bollywood filmPartner (2007).[48] The influence of Bollywood filmi music can also be seen in popular music elsewhere in the world. In 1978, technopop pioneers Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto of the Yellow Magic Orchestra produced an electronic album Cochin Moon based on an experimental fusionbetween electronic music and Bollywoodinspired Indian music.[49] Devo's 1988 hit song "Disco Dancer" was inspired by the song "I am a Disco Dancer" from the Bollywood film Disco Dancer (1982).[50] The 2002 song "Addictive", sung by Truth Hurts and produced by DJ Quikand Dr. Dre, was lifted from Lata Mangeshkar's "Thoda Resham Lagta Hai" from Jyoti (1981).[51] The Black Eyed Peas' Grammy Awardwinning 2005 song "Don't Phunk with My Heart" was inspired by two 1970s Bollywood songs: "Ye Mera Dil Yaar Ka Diwana" from Don (1978) and "Ae Nujawan Hai Sub" from Apradh (1972).[52] Both songs were originally composed by Kalyanji Anandji, sung by Asha Bhosle, and featured the dancer Helen.[53] Also in 2005, the Kronos Quartet re-recorded several R. D. Burman compositions, with Asha Bhosle as the singer, into an album You've stolen my heart - Songs From R D Burman's Bollywood, which was nominated for "Best Contemporary World Music Album" at the 2006 Grammy Awards. Filmi music composed by A. R. Rahman (who would later win two Academy Awards for theSlumdog Millionaire soundtrack) has frequently been sampled by musicians elsewhere in the world, including the Singaporean artist Kelly Poon, the Uzbek artist Iroda Dilroz, the French rap group La Caution, the American artist Ciara, and the German band Lwenherz,[54] among others. Many Asian Underground artists, particularly those among the overseas Indian diaspora, have also been inspired by Bollywood music.

Genre conventions
See also: Masala (film genre) and Parallel Cinema Bollywood films are mostly musicals, and are expected to contain catchy music in the form of song-and-dance numbers woven into the script. A film's success often depends on the quality of such musical numbers.[55] Indeed, a film's music is often released before the movie itself and helps increase the audience.

Indian audiences expect full value for their money, with a good entertainer generally referred to as paisa vasool, (literally, "money's worth").[56]Songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills are all mixed up in a three-hour-long extravaganza with an intermission. Such movies are called masala films, after the Hindi word for a spice mixture. Like masalas, these movies are a mixture of many things such as action, comedy, romance and so on. Most films have heroes who are able to fight off villains all by themselves.

Melodrama and romance are common ingredients to Bollywood films. PicturedAchhut Kanya (1936)

Bollywood plots have tended to be melodramatic. They frequently employ formulaic ingredients such as starcrossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, family ties, sacrifice, corrupt politicians, kidnappers, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences. There have always been Indian films with more artistic aims and more sophisticated stories, both inside and outside the Bollywood tradition (see Parallel Cinema). They often lost out at the box office to movies with more mass appeal. Bollywood conventions are changing, however. A large Indian diaspora in English speaking countries, and increased Western influence at home, have nudged Bollywood films closer to Hollywood models.[57] Film critic Lata Khubchandani writes,"..our earliest films...had liberal doses of sex and kissing scenes in them. Strangely, it was after Independence the censor board came into being and so did all the strictures."[58] Plots now tend to feature Westernised urbanites dating and dancing in clubs rather than centering on pre-arranged marriages. Though these changes can widely be seen in contemporary Bollywood, traditional conservative ways of Indian culture continue to exist in India outside the industry and an element of resistance by some to western-based influences.[57] Despite this, Bollywood continues to play a major role in fashion in India.[57] Indeed some studies into fashion in India have revealed that some people are unaware that the changing nature of fashion in Bollywood films which are presented to them are often influenced by globalisation and many consider the clothes worn by Bollywood actors as authentically Indian.[57]

Cast and crew

for further details see Indian movie actors, Indian movie actresses, Indian film directors, Indian film music directors and Indian playback singers Bollywood employs people from all parts of India. It attracts thousands of aspiring actors and actresses, all hoping for a break in the industry. Models and beauty contestants, television actors, theatre actors and even common people come to Mumbai with the hope and dream of becoming a star. Just as in Hollywood, very few succeed. Since many Bollywood films are shot abroad, many foreign extras are employed too. [59] Stardom in the entertainment industry is very fickle, and Bollywood is no exception. The popularity of the stars can rise and fall rapidly.Directors compete to hire the most popular stars of the day, who are believed to guarantee the success of a movie (though this belief is not always supported by box-office results). Hence many stars make the most of their fame, once they become popular, by making several movies simultaneously. Only a very few non-Indian actors are able to make a mark in Bollywood, though many have tried from time to time. There have been some exceptions, one recent example is the hit film Rang De Basanti, where the lead actress is Alice Patten, an Englishwoman. Kisna, Lagaan, and The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey also featured foreign actors. There is also Emma Brown Garett, an Australian born actress, who is starring in a few Indian films. Bollywood can be very clannish, and the relatives of film-industry insiders have an edge in getting coveted roles in films or being part of a film's crew. Industry connections are no guarantee of a long career: competition is fierce and if film industry scions do not succeed at the box office, their careers will falter. Some of the biggest stars, such as Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, and Shahrukh Khan have succeeded despite total lack of show business connections. For film clans, see List of Bollywood film clans.

Sound
Sound in Bollywood films is rarely recorded on location (otherwise known as sync sound). Therefore, the sound is usually created (or re-created) entirely in the studio,[60] with the actors reciting their lines as their images appear on-screen in the studio in the process known as "looping in the sound" or ADRwith the foley and sound effects added later. This creates several problems, since the sound in these films usually occurs a frame or two earlier or later than the mouth movements or gestures.[60] The actors have to act twice: once on-location, once in the studioand the emotional level on set is often very difficult to recreate. Commercial Indian films, not just the Hindi-language variety, are known for their lack of ambient sound, so there is a silence underlying everything instead of the background sound and noises usually employed in films to create aurally perceivable depth and environment. The ubiquity of ADR in Bollywood cinema became prevalent in the early 1960s with the arrival of the Arriflex 3 camera, which required a blimp (cover) in order to shield the sound of the camera, for which

it was notorious, from on-location filming. Commercial Indian filmmakers, known for their speed, never bothered to blimp the camera, and its excessive noise required that everything had to be re-created in the studio. Eventually, this became the standard for Indian films. The trend was bucked in 2001, after a 30-year hiatus of synchronized sound, with the film Lagaan, in which producer-star Aamir Khaninsisted that the sound be done on location.[60] This opened up a heated debate on the use and economic feasibility of on-location sound, and several Bollywood films have employed on-location sound since then.

Bollywood song and dance

Further information: Hindi dance songs and Filmi Bollywood film music is called filmi music (from Hindi, meaning "of films"). Songs from Bollywood movies are generally pre-recorded by professional playback singers, with the actors then lip synching the words to the song on-screen, often while dancing. While most actors, especially today, are excellent dancers, few are also singers. One notable exception was Kishore Kumar, who starred in several major films in the 1950s while also having a stellar career as a playback singer. K. L. Saigal, Suraiyya, and Noor Jehan were also known as both singers and actors. Some actors in the last thirty years have sung one or more songs themselves; for a list, see Singing actors and actresses in Indian cinema. Playback singers are prominently featured in the opening credits and have their own fans who will go to an otherwise lackluster movie just to hear their favourites. Going by the quality as well as the quantity of the songs they rendered, most notable singers of Bollywood are Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum and Alka Yagnik among female playback singers; and K. L. Saigal, Talat Mahmood, Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan and Sonu Nigam among male playback singers. Mohammed Rafi is often considered arguably the finest of the singers that have lent their voice to Bollywood songs, followed by Lata Mangeshkar, who, through the course of a career spanning over six decades, has recorded thousands of songs for Indian movies. The composers of film music, known as music directors, are also well-known. Their songs can make or break a film and usually do.Remixing of film songs with modern beats and rhythms is a common occurrence today, and producers may even release remixed versions of some of their films' songs along with the films' regular soundtrack albums. The dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily modelled on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans (tawaif), or folk dances. In modern films, Indian dance elements often blend with Western dance styles (as seen on MTV or in Broadway musicals), though it is usual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with a troupe of supporting dancers. Many song-and-dance routines in Indian

films feature unrealistically instantaneous shifts of location or changes of costume between verses of a song. If the hero and heroine dance and sing a duet, it is often staged in beautiful natural surroundings or architecturally grand settings. This staging is referred to as a "picturisation". Songs typically comment on the action taking place in the movie, in several ways. Sometimes, a song is worked into the plot, so that a character has a reason to sing. Other times, a song is an externalisation of a character's thoughts, or presages an event that has not occurred yet in the plot of the movie. In this case, the event is often two characters falling in love. The songs are also often referred to as a "dream sequence", and anything can happen that would not normally happen in the real world. Previously song and dance scenes often used to be shot in Kashmir, but due to political unrest in Kashmir since the end of the 1980s,[61]those scenes have since then often been shot in Western Europe, particularly in Switzerland[62] and Austria.[63] Bollywood films have always used what are now called "item numbers". A physically attractive female character (the "item girl"), often completely unrelated to the main cast and plot of the film, performs a catchy song and dance number in the film. In older films, the "item number" may be performed by a courtesan (tawaif) dancing for a rich client or as part of a cabaret show. The actress Helen was famous for her cabaret numbers. In modern films, item numbers may be inserted as discotheque sequences, dancing at celebrations, or as stage shows. For the last few decades Bollywood producers have been releasing the film's soundtrack, as tapes or CDs, before the main movie release, hoping that the music will pull audiences into the cinema later. Often the soundtrack is more popular than the movie. In the last few years some producers have also been releasing music videos, usually featuring a song from the film. However, some promotional videos feature a song which is not included in the movie.

Dialogues and lyrics

Main article: Bollywood songs The film script or lines of dialogue (called "dialogues" in Indian English) and the song lyrics are often written by different people. Dialogues are usually written in an unadorned Hindi that would be understood by the largest possible audience.[5] Some movies, however, have used regional dialects to evoke a village setting, or oldfashioned, courtly, Persian-influenced Urdu in Mughal era historical films. Jyotika Virdi, in her book The cinematic imagiNation (sic), wrote about the presence of Urdu in Hindi films: "Urdu is often used in film titles, screenplay, lyrics, the language of love, war, and martyrdom." However, she further discussed its decline over the years: "The extent of Urdu used in commercial Hindi cinema has not been stable... the decline of Urdu is mirrored in Hindi films... It is true that many Urdu words have survived and have become

part of Hindi cinema's popular vocabulary. But that is as far as it goes."[64] Contemporary mainstream movies also make great use of English. According to Bollywood Audiences Editorial, "English has begun to challenge the ideological work done by Urdu."[65] Some movie scripts are first written in Latin script.[66] Characters may shift from one language to the other to express a certain atmosphere (for example, English in a business setting and Hindi in an informal one). Cinematic language, whether in dialogues or lyrics, is often melodramatic and invokes God, family, mother, duty, and self-sacrifice liberally. Song lyrics are often about love. Bollywood song lyrics, especially in the old movies, frequently use the poetic vocabulary of court Urdu, with many Persian loanwords.[67] Another source for love lyrics is the long Hindu tradition of poetry about the amours of Krishna, Radha, and thegopis, as referenced in films such as Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje and Lagaan. Music directors often prefer working with certain lyricists, to the point that the lyricist and composer are seen as a team. This phenomenon is compared to the pairings of American composers and songwriters that created old-time Broadway musicals.

Finances
Bollywood films are multi-million dollar productions, with the most expensive productions costing up to 100 crores rupees (roughly USD 20 million). The latest Science fiction movie Ra.One was made at an immense budget of 135 crores (roughly USD 27 million), making it the most expensive movie ever produced in Bollywood.[68] Sets, costumes, special effects, and cinematography were less than world-class up until the mid-to-late 1990s, although with some notable exceptions. As Western films and television gain wider distribution in India itself, there is an increasing pressure for Bollywood films to attain the same production levels, particularly in areas such as action and special effects. Recent Bollywood films have employed international technicians to improve in these areas, such as Krrish (2006) which has action choreographed byHong Kong based Tony Ching. The increasing accessibility to professional action and special effects, coupled with rising film budgets, has seen an explosion in the action and sci-fi genres. Sequences shot overseas have proved a real box office draw, so Mumbai film crews are increasingly filming in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, continental Europe and elsewhere. Nowadays, Indian producers are winning more and more funding for big-budget films shot within India as well, such as Lagaan, Devdas and other recent films. Funding for Bollywood films often comes from private distributors and a few large studios. Indian banks and financial institutions were forbidden from lending money to movie studios. However, this ban has now been lifted.[69] As finances are not regulated, some funding also comes from illegitimate sources, such as the Mumbai underworld. The Mumbai underworld has been known to be involved in the production of several films, and are notorious for their patronisation of several prominent film personalities; On occasion,

they have been known to use money and muscle power to get their way in cinematic deals. In January 2000, Mumbai mafia hitmen shot Rakesh Roshan, a film director and father of star Hrithik Roshan. In 2001, the Central Bureau of Investigation seized all prints of the movie Chori Chori Chupke Chupke after the movie was found to be funded by members of the Mumbai underworld.[70] Another problem facing Bollywood is widespread copyright infringement of its films. Often, bootleg DVD copies of movies are available before the prints are officially released in cinemas. Manufacturing of bootleg DVD, VCD, and VHS copies of the latest movie titles is a well established 'small scale industry' in parts of South Asia and South East Asia. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) estimates that the Bollywood industry loses $100 million annually in loss of revenue from pirated home videos and DVDs. Besides catering to the homegrown market, demand for these copies is large amongst some sections of the Indian diaspora, too. (In fact, bootleg copies are the only way people in Pakistan can watch Bollywood movies, since the Government of Pakistan has banned their sale, distribution and telecast). Films are frequently broadcast without compensation by countless small cable TV companies in India and other parts of South Asia. Small convenience stores run by members of the Indian diaspora in the US and the UK regularly stock tapes and DVDs of dubious provenance, while consumer copying adds to the problem. The availability of illegal copies of movies on the Internet also contributes to the piracy problem. Satellite TV, television and imported foreign films are making huge inroads into the domestic Indian entertainment market. In the past, most Bollywood films could make money; now fewer tend to do so. However, most Bollywood producers make money, recouping their investments from many sources of revenue, including selling ancillary rights. There are also increasing returns from theatres in Western countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, where Bollywood is slowly getting noticed. As more Indians migrate to these countries, they form a growing market for upscale Indian films. For a comparison of Hollywood and Bollywood financial figures, see chart. It shows tickets sold in 2002 and total revenue estimates. Bollywood sold 3.6 billion tickets and had total revenues (theatre tickets, DVDs, television and so on.) of US$1.3 billion, whereas Hollywood films sold 2.6 billion tickets and generated total revenues (again from all formats) of US$51 billion.

Advertising
Many Indian artists used to make a living by hand-painting movie billboards and posters (The well-known artist M.F. Hussain used to paint film posters early in his career). This was because human labour was found to be cheaper than printing and distributing publicity material.[71]Now, a majority of the huge and ubiquitous billboards in India's major cities are created with computer-printed vinyl. The old hand-painted posters, once regarded as ephemera, are becoming increasingly collectible as folk art.[71]

Releasing the film music, or music videos, before the actual release of the film can also be considered a form of advertising. A popular tune is believed to help pull audiences into the theaters. [72] Bollywood publicists have begun to use the Internet as a venue for advertising. Most of the better-funded film releases now have their own websites, where browsers can view trailers, stills, and information about the story, cast, and crew.[73] Bollywood is also used to advertise other products. Product placement, as used in Hollywood, is widely practiced in Bollywood.[74] Bollywood movie stars appear in print and television advertisements for other products, such as watches or soap (see Celebrity endorsement). Advertisers say that a star endorsement boosts sales.

Awards
The Filmfare Awards ceremony is one of the most prominent film events given for Hindi films in India.[75] The Indian screen magazine Filmfarestarted the first Filmfare Awards in 1954, and awards were given to the best films of 1953. The ceremony was referred to as the Clare Awardsafter the magazine's editor. Modelled after the poll-based merit format of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, individuals may submit their votes in separate categories. A dual voting system was developed in 1956.[76] Like the Oscars, the Filmfare awards are frequently accused of bias towards commercial success rather than artistic merit. As the Filmfare, the National Film Awards were introduced in 1954. Since 1973, the Indian government has sponsored the National Film Awards, awarded by the government run Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF). The DFF screens not only Bollywood films, but films from all the other regional movie industries and independent/art films. These awards are handed out at an annual ceremony presided over by the President of India. Under this system, in contrast to the National Film Awards, which are decided by a panel appointed by Indian Government, the Filmfare Awards are voted for by both the public and a committee of experts.[77] Additional ceremonies held within India are:

Screen Awards Stardust Awards

Ceremonies held overseas are:

Bollywood Movie Awards - Long Island, New York, United States Global Indian Film Awards - (different country each year) International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA) - (different country each year)

Zee Cine Awards- (different country each year)

Most of these award ceremonies are lavishly staged spectacles, featuring singing, dancing, and numerous celebrities.

Film education

Film and Television Institute of India Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute Asian Academy of Film & Television

Popularity and appeal

See also: List of highest-grossing Bollywood films Besides being popular among the India diaspora, such far off locations as Nigeria to Egypt to Senegal and to Russia generations of non-Indian fans have grown up with Bollywood during the years, bearing witness to the cross-cultural appeal of Indian movies.[78] Over the last years of the twentieth century and beyond, Bollywood progressed in its popularity as it entered the consciousness of Western audiences and producers.[38][79]

Africa
Historically, Hindi films have been distributed to some parts of Africa, largely by Lebanese businessmen. Mother India (1957), for example, continued to be played in Nigeria decades after its release. Indian movies have also gained ground so as to alter the style of Hausa fashions, songs have also been copied by Hausa singers and stories have influenced the writings of Nigerian novelists. Stickers of Indian films and stars decorate taxis and buses in Northern Nigeria, while posters of Indian films adorn the walls of tailor shops and mechanics' garages in the country. Unlike in Europe and North America where Indian films largely cater to the expatriate Indian market yearning to keep in touch with their homeland, in West Africa, as in many other parts of the world, such movies rose in popularity despite the lack of a significant Indian audience, where movies are about an alien culture, based on a religion wholly different, and, for the most part, a language that is unintelligible to the viewers. One such explanation for this lies in the similarities between the two cultures. Other similarities include wearing turbans; the presence of animals in markets; porters carrying large bundles, chewing sugar cane; youths riding Bajaj motor scooters; wedding celebrations, and so forth. With the strict Muslim culture, Indian movies were said to show "respect" toward women, where Hollywood movies were seen to have "no shame". In Indian movies women were modestly dressed, men and women rarely kiss, and there is no nudity, thus Indian movies are said to "have culture" that Hollywood films lack. The latter choice was a failure because "they don't base themselves on the problems of the people," where the former is

based socialist values and on the reality of developing countries emerging from years of colonialism. Indian movies also allowed for a new youth culture to follow without such ideological baggage as "becoming western."[78] Bollywood is also popular among Somalis and the Somali diaspora, where the emerging Islamic Courts Union found a bte noire.[80] Chadand Ethiopia have also shown an interest in the movies.[81] Several Bollywood personalities have avenued to the continent for both shooting movies and off-camera projects. The film Padmashree Laloo Prasad Yadav (2005) was one of many movies shot in South Africa.[82] Dil Jo Bhi Kahey (2005) was shot almost entirely in Mauritius, which has a large ethnically Indian population. Ominously, however, the popularity of old Bollywood versus a new, changing Bollywood seems to be diminishing the popularity on the continent. The changing style of Bollywood has begun to question such an acceptance. The new era features more sexually explicit and violent films. Nigerian viewers, for example, commented that older films of the 1950s and 1960s had culture to the newer, more westernized picturizations.[78] The old days of India avidly "advocating decolonization ... and India's policy was wholly influenced by his missionary zeal to end racial domination and discrimination in the African territories" were replaced by newer realities.[83] The emergence of Nollywood, Africa's local movie industry has also contributed to the declining popularity of Bollywood films. A greater globalised world worked in tandem with the sexualisation of Indian films so as to become more like American films, thus negating the preferred values of an old Bollywood and diminishing Indian soft power.

Asia
Bollywood films are widely watched in South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Many Pakistanis watch Bollywood films, as they understand Hindi (due to its linguistic similarity to Urdu).[84] Pakistan banned the legal import of Bollywood movies in 1965. However, trade in pirated DVDs[85] and illegal cable broadcasts ensured the continued popularity of Bollywood releases in Pakistan. Exceptions were made for a few films, such as the 2006 colorized re-release of the classic Mughal-eAzamor the 2006 film Taj Mahal. Early in 2008, the Pakistani government eased the ban and allowed the import of even more movies; 16 were screened in 2008.[86] Continued easing followed in 2009 and 2010. The new policy is opposed by nationalists and representatives of Pakistan's small film industry but is embraced by cinema owners, who are making profits after years of low receipts.[87] Bollywood movies are popular in Afghanistan due to the country's proximity to the Indian subcontinent and cultural perspectives present in the movies.[88] A number of Bollywood movies were filmed inside Afghanistan while some dealt with the country, including Dharmatma, Kabul Express, Khuda

Gawah and Escape From Taliban.[89][90] Hindi films have been popular in Arab countries, including Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf countries.[91] Imported Indian films are usually subtitled in Arabic upon the film's release. Since the early 2000s, Bollywood has progressed in Israel. Special channels dedicated to Indian films have been displayed on cable television.[92] Bollywood films are popular inSoutheast Asia (particularly in Maritime Southeast Asia)[93] and Central Asia (particularly in Uzbekistan[94] and Tajikistan).[95] Some Hindi movies had success in the China in the 1940s and 1950s. The most popular Hindi films in that country were Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946), Awaara (1951) and Two Acres of Land (1953). Raj Kapoor was a famous movie star in China, and the song "Awara Hoon" ("I am a Tramp") was popular in the country. Since then, Hindi films significantly declined in popularity in China, until the Academy Awardnominated Lagaan (2001) became the first Indian film to have a nation-wide release there in decades.[96] The Chinese filmmaker He Ping was impressed by Lagaan, especially its soundtrack, and thus hired the film's music composer A. R. Rahman to score the soundtrack for his filmWarriors of Heaven and Earth (2003).[97] Several older Hindi films have a cult following in Japan, particularly the films directed by Guru Dutt.[98] Indian films are the most popular foreign films in Tajikistan, and Hindi-Urdu departments are very large in the country.[99]

Europe
The awareness of Hindi cinema is substantial in the United Kingdom,[100] where they frequently enter the UK top ten. Many films, such asKabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) have been set in London. Bollywood is also appreciated in France, Germany, the Netherlands,[101] and the Scandinavian countries. Various Bollywood movies are dubbed in German and shown on the German television channel RTL II on a regular basis.[102] Bollywood films are particularly popular in the former Soviet Union. Bollywood films have been dubbed into Russian, and shown in prominent theatres such as Mosfilm and Lenfilm. Ashok Sharma, Indian Ambassador to Suriname, who has served three times in the Commonwealth of Independent States region during his diplomatic career said: The popularity of Bollywood in the CIS dates back to the Soviet days when the films from Hollywood and other Western countries were banned in the Soviet Union. As there was no means of other cheap entertainment, the films from Bollywood provided the Soviets a cheap source of entertainment as they were supposed to be non-controversial and non-political. In addition, the Soviet Union was recovering from the onslaught of the Second World War. The films from India, which were also recovering from the disaster of partition and the struggle for freedom from

colonial rule, were found to be a good source of providing hope with entertainment to the struggling masses. The aspirations and needs of the people of both countries matched to a great extent. These films were dubbed in Russian and shown in theatres throughout the Soviet Union. The films from Bollywood also strengthened family values, which was a big factor for their popularity with the government authorities in the Soviet Union.[103] The film Mera Naam Joker (1970), sought to cater to such an appeal and the popularity of Raj Kapoor in Russia, when it recruited Russian actress Kseniya Ryabinkina for the movie. In the contemporary era, Lucky: No Time for Love (2005) was shot entirely in Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet film distribution system, Hollywood occupied the void created in the Russian film market. This made things difficult for Bollywood as it was losing market share to Hollywood. However, Russian newspapers report that there is a renewed interest in Bollywood among young Russians.[104]

North America
Bollywood has experienced a marked growth in revenue in North American markets, and is particularly popular amongst the South Asian communities in large cities as Chicago, Toronto and New York City.[38] Yash Raj Films, one of India's largest production houses and distributors, reported in September 2005 that Bollywood films in the United States earn around $100 million a year through theater screenings, video sales and the sale of movie soundtracks.[38] In other words, films from India do more business in the United States than films from any other non-English speaking country.[38] Numerous films in the mid-1990s and onwards have been largely, or entirely, shot in New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Toronto. Bollywood's immersion in the traditional Hollywood domain was further tied with such films as The Guru (2002) and Marigold: An Adventure in India (2007) trying to popularise the Bollywood-theme for Hollywood.

Oceania
Bollywood is not as successful in the Oceanic countries and Pacific Islands such as New Guinea. However, it ranks second to Hollywood in countries such as Fiji, with its large Indian minority, Australia and New Zealand.[105] Australia is one of the countries where there is a large South Asian Diaspora. Bollywood is popular amongst non-Asians in the country as well.[105] Since 1997 the country has provided a backdrop for an increasing number of Bollywood films.[105] Indian filmmakers have been attracted to Australia's diverse locations and landscapes, and initially used it as the setting for song-and-dance sequences, which demonstrated the contrast between the values.[105] However, nowadays, Australian locations are becoming more important to the plot of Bollywood films.[105] Hindi films shot in Australia usually incorporate aspects of Australian lifestyle. The Yash Raj Film Salaam Namaste(2005) became the first Indian film to be shot entirely in Australia and was the most successful Bollywood film of 2005 in the country. [106]This was

followed by Heyy Babyy (2007) Chak De! India (2007) and Singh Is Kinng (2008) which turned out to be box office successes.[105]Following the release of Salaam Namaste, on a visit to India the then Prime Minister John Howard also sought, having seen the film, to have more Indian movies shooting in the country to boost tourism, where the Bollywood and cricket nexus, was further tightened with Steve Waugh's appointment as tourism ambassador to India.[107] Australian actress Tania Zaetta, who co-starred in Salaam Namaste, among other Bollywood films, expressed her keenness to expand her career in Bollywood.[108]

South America
Bollywood movies are not influential in many countries of South America, though Bollywood culture and dance is recognised. However, due to significant South Asian diasporic communities in Suriname[109] and Guyana, Hindi language movies are popular.[110] In 2006, Dhoom 2became the first Bollywood film to be shot in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[111] In January 2012, it was announced that UTV Motion Pictures would be releasing movies in Peru, starting with Guzaarish.[112]

Plagiarism
Constrained by rushed production schedules and small budgets, some Bollywood writers and musicians have been known to resort toplagiarism. Ideas, plot lines, tunes or riffs have been copied from other Indian film industries or foreign films (including Hollywood and otherAsian films) without acknowledgement of the original source. This has led to criticism towards the film industry.[113] Before the 1990s, this could be done with impunity. Copyright enforcement was lax in India and few actors or directors ever saw an official contract.[114] The Hindi film industry was not widely known to non-Indian audiences (excluding the Soviet states), who would not even be aware that their material was being copied. Audiences may also not have been aware of the plagiarism since many audiences in India were unfamiliar with foreign films and music.[113] While copyright enforcement in India is still somewhat lenient, Bollywood and other film industries are much more aware of each other now and Indian audiences are more familiar with foreign movies and music. Organizations like the India EU Film Initiative seek to foster a community between film makers and industry professional between India and the EU. [113] One of the common justifications of plagiarism in Bollywood in the media is that producers often play a safer option by remaking popular Hollywood films in an Indian context. Screenwriters generally produce original scripts, but due to financial uncertainty and insecurity over the success of a film many were rejected.[113] Screenwriters themselves have been criticised for lack of creativity which happened due to tight schedules and restricted funds in the industry to employ better screenwriters. [115] Certain filmmakers see plagiarism in Bollywood as an integral part of globalisation where American and western cultures are

firmly embedding themselves into Indian culture, which is manifested, amongst other mediums, in Bollywood films.[115] Vikram Bhatt, director of films such as Raaz, a remake of What Lies Beneath, and Kasoor, a remake of Jagged Edge, has spoken about the strong influence of American culture and desire to produce box office hits based along the same lines in Bollywood. He said, "Financially, I would be more secure knowing that a particular piece of work has already done well at the box office. Copying is endemic everywhere in India. Our TV shows are adaptations of American programmes. We want their films, their cars, their planes, their Diet Cokes and also their attitude. The American way of life is creeping into our culture."[115] Mahesh Bhatt has said, "If you hide the source, you're a genius. There's no such thing as originality in the creative sphere".[115] There have been very few cases of film copyright violations taken to court because of serious delays in the legal process, and due to the long time they take to decide a case.[113] There have been some notable cases of conflict though. The makers of Partner (2007) and Zinda (2005) have been targeted by the owners and distributors of the original films, Hitch and Oldboy.[116][117] American Studio Twentieth Century Foxbrought the Mumbai-based B.R. Films to court over its forthcoming Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai, allegedly an illegal remake of its 1992 film My Cousin Vinny. B.R. Films eventually settled out of court by paying the studio at a cost of about $200,000, paving the way for the film's release.[118] Some on the other hand do comply with copyright law, with Orion Pictures in 2008 securing the rights to remake the Hollywood film Wedding Crashers.[119]

Cinema of India
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
South Asian cinema

Cinema of India

Assamese cinema Bengali cinema

West Bengal cinema

Bhojpuri cinema Gujarati cinema Hindi cinema (Bollywood) Marathi cinema Konkani cinema Oriya cinema Punjabi cinema

South Indian cinema

Kannada cinema Malayalam cinema Tamil cinema Telugu cinema Tulu Cinema

Cinema of Bangladesh

Bengali cinema

Cinema of Nepal Cinema of Sri Lanka

Tamil cinema

Cinema of Pakistan

Karachi cinema Lahore cinema Pashto cinema Pothwari cinema Sindhi cinema

Culture of India

Architecture Art Cinema Comic books Cuisine Dance Festivals Folklore Literature Music Poetry Radio Sculpture Sports

Television Theatre

The cinema of India has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. It consists of films produced across India, which includes the cinematic culture ofAndhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala,Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Indian films came to be followed throughout South Asia and the Middle East. The cinema as a medium gained popularity in the country as many as 1,000 films in various languages of India were produced annually.[1] Expatriates in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States continue to give rise to international audiences for Indian films of various languages. In the 20th century, Indian cinema, along with the Hollywood and Chinese film industries, became a global enterprise.[2] At the end of 2010 it was reported that in terms of annual film output, India ranks first, followed by Hollywood and China.[3] Enhanced technology paved the way for upgrading from established cinematic norms of delivering product, altering the manner in which content reached the target audience, as per regional tastes.[2] Indian cinema found markets in over 90 countries where films from India are screened.[4] Films by Indian directors like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak,Shaji N.Karun,Girish Kasaravalli,[5] Shyam Benegal,[6] Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan [7] and Mani Ratnam have been screened in various international film festivals.[4] Other Indian filmmakers such as Shekhar Kapur, Karan Johar, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta and Nagesh Kukunoor have also found success overseas.[8] The Indian government extended film delegations to foreign countries such as the United States of America and Japan while the country's Film Producers Guild sent similar missions through Europe.[9] Sivaji Ganesan, and S. V. Ranga Rao won their respective first international award for Best Actor held at Afro-Asian Film Festival in Cairo and Indonesian Film Festival in Jakarta for the films Veerapandiya Kattabomman and Narthanasala in 1959 and 1963.[10][11] India is the world's largest producer of films.[12][13] In 2009, India produced a total of 2961 films on celluloid, that include a staggering figure of 1288 feature films.[14] The provision of 100%foreign direct investment has made the Indian film market attractive for foreign enterprises such as 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures[15][16] and Warner Bros.[17] Indian enterprises such as Zee, UTV, Suresh Productions, Adlabs and Sun Network's Sun Picturesalso participated in producing and distributing films.[17] Tax incentives to multiplexes

have aided the multiplex boom in India.[17] By 2003 as many as 30 film production companies had been listed in the National Stock Exchange of India, making the commercial presence of the medium felt.[17] The South Indian film industry defines the four film cultures of South India as a single entity. They are the Kannada, the Malayalam, the Tamil and the Telugu industries. Although developed independently for a long period of time, gross exchange of film performers and technicians as well asglobalisation helped to shape this new identity, currently holding 75% of all film revenues in India.[18] The Indian diaspora consists of millions of Indians overseas for which films are made available both through mediums such as DVDs and by screening of films in their country of residence wherever commercially feasible.[19] These earnings, accounting for some 12% of the revenue generated by a mainstream film, contribute substantially to the overall revenue of Indian cinema, the net worth of which was found to be US$1.3 billion in 2000.[20] Music in Indian cinema is another substantial revenue generator, with the music rights alone accounting for 45% of the net revenues generated by a film in India.[20]
Contents
[hide]

1 History

o o

1.1 Golden Age of Indian cinema 1.2 Modern Indian cinema

2 Global discourse 3 Influences 4 Regional industries

o o o o o o o o o o o o

4.1 Assamese cinema 4.2 Bengali cinema 4.3 Bhojpuri cinema 4.4 Gujarati cinema 4.5 Hindi cinema 4.6 Kannada cinema 4.7 Konkani cinema 4.8 Malayalam cinema 4.9 Marathi cinema 4.10 Oriya cinema 4.11 Punjabi cinema 4.12 Sindhi Cinema

o o

4.13 Tamil cinema 4.14 Telugu cinema

5 Genres and styles

o o

5.1 Masala films 5.2 Parallel cinema

6 Film music 7 Awards 8 Film Institutes in India 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 12 Further reading

[edit]History

A scene from Raja Harishchandra(1913) The first full-length motion picture.

Following the screening of the Lumire moving pictures in London (1895) cinema became a sensation across Europe and by July 1896 the Lumire films had been in show in Bombay (nowMumbai).[21] The first short films in India were directed by Hiralal Sen, starting with The Flower of Persia (1898).[22] The first Indian movie released in India was 'Shree Pundalik' by Dadasaheb Torne on 18 May 1912 at 'Coronation Cinematograph', Mumbai. .[23] The first full-length motion picture in India was produced by Dadasaheb Phalke, Dadasaheb is the pioneer of Indian film industry a scholar on India's languages and culture, who brought together elements from Sanskrit epics to produce his Raja Harishchandra (1913), a silent film in Marathi. The female roles in the film were played by male actors.[24] The first Indian chain of cinema theaters was owned by

the Calcutta entrepreneur Jamshedji Framji Madan, who oversaw production of 10 films annually and distributed them throughout the Indian subcontinent.[24] Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu was an Indian artist and a pioneer in the production of silent Indian movies and talkies. Starting from 1909, he was involved in many aspects of Indian cinema's history, like travelling to different regions in Asia, to promote film work. He was the first to build and own cinema hall's in Madras. The Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu Award is an annual award incorporated into Nandi Awards to recognize people for their contributions to the Telugu film industry.[25] [26] During the early twentieth century cinema as a medium gained popularity across India's population and its many economic sections.[21]Tickets were made affordable to the common man at a low price and for the financially capable additional comforts meant additional admission ticket price. [21] Audiences thronged to cinema halls as this affordable medium of entertainment was available for as low as ananna (4 paisa) in Bombay.[21] The content of Indian commercial cinema was increasingly tailored to appeal to these masses.[21] Young Indian producers began to incorporate elements of India's social life and culture into cinema.[27] Others brought with them ideas from across the world.[27] This was also the time when global audiences and markets became aware of India's film industry.[27] In 1927, the British Government, in order to promote the market in India for British films over American ones, formed the Indian Cinematograph Enquiry Committee. The ICC consisted of three British and three Indians, led by T. Rangachari, a Madras lawyer.[28] This committee failed to support the desired recommendations of supporting British Film, instead recommending support for the fledgling Indian film industry. Their suggestions were shelved.

Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar in Achhut Kanya (1936).

Ardeshir Irani released Alam Ara which was the first Indian talking film, on 14 March 1931.[24] H.M. Reddy, produced and directed Bhakta Prahlada (Telugu), released on Sept 15, 1931 and Kalidas(Tamil) [29] released on Oct 31, 1931. Kalidas was produced by Ardeshir Irani and directed byH.M. Reddy. These two films are south India's first talkie films to have a theatrical release.[30]Following the inception of 'talkies' in India some film stars were highly sought after and earned comfortable incomes through acting.[24] As sound technology

advanced the 1930s saw the rise of music in Indian cinema with musicals such as Indra Sabha and Devi Devyani marking the beginning of song-and-dance in India's films.[24] Studios emerged across major cities such asChennai, Kolkata, and Mumbai as film making became an established craft by 1935, exemplified by the success of Devdas, which had managed to enthrall audiences nationwide.[31] Bombay Talkies came up in 1934 and Prabhat Studios in Pune had begun production of films meant for theMarathi language audience.[31] Filmmaker R. S. D. Choudhury produced Wrath (1930), banned by the British Raj in India as it depicted actors as Indian leaders, an expression censored during the days of the Indian independence movement.[24] The Indian Masala filma slang used for commercial films with song, dance, romance etc.came up following the second world war.[31]South Indian cinema gained prominence throughout India with the release of S.S. Vasan's Chandralekha.[31] During the 1940s cinema inSouth India accounted for nearly half of India's cinema halls and cinema came to be viewed as an instrument of cultural revival.[31] Thepartition of India following its independence divided the nation's assets and a number of studios went to the newly formed Pakistan.[31] The strife of partition would become an enduring subject for film making during the decades that followed. [31] After Indian independence the cinema of India was inquired by the S.K. Patil Commission. [32] S.K. Patil, head of the commission, viewed cinema in India as a 'combination of art, industry, and showmanship' while noting its commercial value.[32] Patil further recommended setting up of a Film Finance Corporation under the Ministry of Finance.[33] This advice was later taken up in 1960 and the institution came into being to provide financial support to talented filmmakers throughout India.[33] The Indian government had established a Films Division by 1948 which eventually became one of the largest documentary film producers in the world with an annual production of over 200 short documentaries, each released in 18 languages with 9000 prints for permanent film theaters across the country.[34] The Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), an art movement with a communist inclination, began to take shape through the 1940s and the 1950s.[32] A number of realistic IPTA plays, such as Bijon Bhattacharya's Nabanna in 1944 (based on the tragedy of the Bengal famine of 1943), prepared the ground for the solidification of realism in Indian cinema, exemplified by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas's Dharti Ke Lal (Children of the Earth) in 1946.[32] The IPTA movement continued to emphasize on reality and went on to produce Mother India and Pyaasa, among India's most recognizable cinematic productions.[35]

[edit]Golden

Age of Indian cinema

Following India's independence, the period from the late 1940s to the 1960s are regarded by film historians as the 'Golden Age' of Indian cinema.[36][37][38] Some of the most critically acclaimed Indian films of all time were produced during this period. This period saw the emergence of a new Parallel Cinema movement, mainly led by Bengali cinema.[39] Early examples of films in this movement include Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar (1946),[40] Ritwik Ghatak's Nagarik (1952),[41][42] and Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953), laying the

foundations for Indian neorealism[43] and the "Indian New Wave".[44] Pather Panchali (1955), the first part of The Apu Trilogy (19551959) by Satyajit Ray, marked his entry in Indian cinema.[45] The Apu Trilogy won major prizes at all the major international film festivals and led to the 'Parallel Cinema' movement being firmly established in Indian cinema. Its influence on world cinema can also be felt in the "youthful coming-ofagedramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties" which "owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy".[46] The cinematographer Subrata Mitra, who made his debut with Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy, also had an important influence on cinematography across the world. One of his most important techniques was bounce lighting, to recreate the effect of daylight on sets. He pioneered the technique while filmingAparajito (1956), the second part of The Apu Trilogy.[47] Some of the experimental techniques which Satyajit Ray pioneered include photo-negative flashbacks and X-ray digressions while filming Pratidwandi (1972).[48] Ray's 1967 script for a film to be called The Alien, which was eventually cancelled, is also widely believed to have been the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's E.T. (1982).[49][50][51] Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak went on to direct many more critically acclaimed 'art films', and they were followed by other acclaimed Indian independent filmmakers such as Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Kaul and Buddhadeb Dasgupta.[39] During the 1960s, Indira Gandhi's intervention during her reign as the Information and Broadcasting Minister of India further led to production of off-beat cinematic expression being supported by the official Film Finance Corporation.[33] Commercial Hindi cinema also began thriving, with examples of acclaimed films at the time include the Guru Dutt films Pyaasa (1957) andKaagaz Ke Phool (1959) and the Raj Kapoor films Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955). These films expressed social themes mainly dealing with working-class urban life in India; Awaara presented the city as both a nightmare and a dream, while Pyaasa critiqued the unreality of city life.[39] Some epic films were also produced at the time, including Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), which was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,[52] and K. Asif's Mughal-eAzam (1960).[53] V. Shantaram's Do Aankhen Barah Haath(1957) is believed to have inspired the Hollywood film The Dirty Dozen (1967).[54] Madhumati (1958), directed by Bimal Roy and written byRitwik Ghatak, popularized the theme of reincarnation in Western popular culture.[55] Other mainstream Hindi filmmakers at the time includedKamal Amrohi and Vijay Bhatt. Ever since Chetan Anand's social realist film Neecha Nagar won the Grand Prize at the first Cannes Film Festival,[40] Indian films were frequently in competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for nearly every year in the 1950s and early 1960s, with a number of them winning major prizes at the festival. Satyajit Ray also won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Aparajito (1956), the second part of The Apu Trilogy, and the Golden Bear and two Silver Bears for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival.[56] Ray's contemporaries, Ritwik Ghatak and Guru Dutt, were overlooked in their own lifetimes but had belatedly generated international recognition much later in the 1980s and 1990s.[56][57] Ray is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema,[58] with Dutt[59] and Ghatak.[60] In 1992, the Sight & Sound Critics'

Poll ranked Ray at #7 in its list of "Top 10 Directors" of all time,[61] while Dutt was ranked #73 in the 2002 Sight & Sound greatest directors poll.[59] A number of Indian films from different regions, from this era are often included among the greatest films of all time in various critics' and directors' polls. At this juncture, Telugu cinema and Tamil cinema experienced their respective golden age and during this time the production of Indian Folklore, fantasy and Mythological films like Mayabazar and Narthanasala grew up. A number of Satyajit Ray films appeared in theSight & Sound Critics' Poll, including The Apu Trilogy (ranked #4 in 1992 if votes are combined),[62] The Music Room (ranked #27 in 1992),Charulata (ranked #41 in 1992)[63] and Days and Nights in the Forest (ranked #81 in 1982).[64] The 2002 Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll also included the Guru Dutt films Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool (both tied at #160), the Ritwik Ghatak films Meghe Dhaka Tara (ranked #231) and Komal Gandhar (ranked #346), and Raj Kapoor's Awaara, Vijay Bhatt's Baiju Bawra, Mehboob Khan's Mother India and K. Asif'sMughal-e-Azam all tied at #346.[65] In 1998, the critics' poll conducted by the Asian film magazine Cinemaya included The Apu Trilogy(ranked #1 if votes are combined), Ray's Charulata and The Music Room (both tied at #11), and Ghatak's Subarnarekha (also tied at #11).[60]In 1999, The Village Voice top 250 "Best Film of the Century" critics' poll also included The Apu Trilogy (ranked #5 if votes are combined).[66]In 2005, The Apu Trilogy and Pyaasa were also featured in Time magazine's "AllTIME" 100 best movies list.[67]

[edit]Modern

Indian cinema

Some filmmakers such as Shyam Benegal continued to produce realistic Parallel Cinema throughout the 1970s,[68] alongside Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Gautam Ghose in Bengali cinema; Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shaji N. Karun, John Abraham and G. Aravindan in Malayalam cinema; Nirad Mohapatra in Oriya cinema; and Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Ketan Mehta, Govind Nihalani and Vijaya Mehta in Hindi cinema.[39] However, the 'art film' bent of the Film Finance Corporation came under criticism during a Committee on Public Undertakings investigation in 1976, which accused the body of not doing enough to encourage commercial cinema.[69]The 1970s did, nevertheless, see the rise of commercial cinema in form of enduring films such as Sholay (1975), which solidified Amitabh Bachchan's position as a lead actor.[69] The devotional classic Jai Santoshi Ma was also released in 1975.[69] Another important film from 1975 was Deewar, directed by Yash Chopra and written by Salim-Javed. A crime film pitting "a policeman against his brother, a gang leader based on real-life smuggler Haji Mastan", portrayed by Amitabh Bachchan, it was described as being absolutely key to Indian cinema byDanny Boyle.[70] Long after the Golden Age of Indian cinema, South India's Malayalam cinema of Kerala regarded as one of the best Indian film genres experienced its own 'Golden Age' in the 1980s and early 1990s. Some of the most acclaimed Indian filmmakers at the time were from the Malayalam industry, including Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, T. V. Chandran and Shaji N. Karun.[71] Adoor Gopalakrishnan, who is often considered to be Satyajit

Ray's spiritual heir,[72] directed some of his most acclaimed films during this period, including Elippathayam(1981) which won the Sutherland Trophy at the London Film Festival, as well as Mathilukal (1989) which won major prizes at the Venice Film Festival.[73] Shaji N. Karun's debut film Piravi (1989) won the Camera d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, while his second film Swaham (1994) was in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.[74] Commercial Malayalam cinema also began gaining popularity with theaction films of Jayan, a popular stunt actor whose success was short-lived when he died while filming a dangerous stunt, followed byMohanlal, whose film Yodha was acclaimed for its action sequences and technical aspects. Commercial Hindi cinema further grew throughout the 1980s and the 1990s with the release of films such as Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981) Mr India (1987), Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Tezaab (1988), Chandni (1989), Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Baazigar (1993), Darr (1993),[69]Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), many of which starred Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan. The 1990s also saw a surge in the national popularity of Tamil cinema as films directed by Mani Ratnam captured India's imagination.[69]Such films included Roja (1992) and Bombay (1995). Ratnam's earlier film Nayagan (1987), starring Kamal Haasan, was included in Time magazine's "All-TIME" 100 best movies, alongside four earlier Indian films: Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy (19551959) and Guru Dutt'sPyaasa (1957).[67][75] Another Tamil director S. Shankar, also made waves through his film Kadhalan, and later in the 2000s with Sivaji andEnthiran (Robot). Tabarana Kathe, a Kannada film, was screened at various film festivals including Tashkent, Nantes, Tokyo, and the Film Festival of Russia.[76] In the late 1990s, 'Parallel Cinema' began experiencing a resurgence in Hindi cinema, largely due to the critical and commercial success ofSatya (1998), a low-budget film based on the Mumbai underworld, directed by Ram Gopal Varma and written by Anurag Kashyap. The film's success led to the emergence of a distinct genre known as Mumbai noir,[77] urban films reflecting social problems in the city of Mumbai.[78]Later films belonging to the Mumbai noir genre include Madhur Bhandarkar's Chandni Bar (2001) and Traffic Signal (2007), Ram Gopal Varma's Company (2002) and its prequel D (2005), Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday (2004), Irfan Kamal's Thanks Maa (2009), and Deva Katta's Prasthanam (2010). Other art film directors active today include Mrinal Sen, Mir Shaani, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Gautam Ghose,Sandip Ray, Aparna Sen and Rituparno Ghosh in Bengali cinema; Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shaji N. Karun,Santosh Sivan and T. V. Chandran in Malayalam cinema; Nirad Mohapatra in Oriya cinema; Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Ketan Mehta, Govind Nihalani, Shyam Benegal,[39] Mira Nair, Nagesh Kukunoor, Sudhir Mishra and Nandita Das in Hindi cinema; Mani Ratnam in Tamil cinema;and Deepa Mehta, Anant Balani,Homi Adajania, Vijay Singh and Sooni Taraporevala in Indian English cinema.

[edit]Global

discourse

Indians during the colonial rule bought film equipment from Europe.[27] The British funded wartime propaganda films during the second world war, some of which showed the Indian army pitted against the axis powers, specifically the Empire of Japan, which had managed to infiltrate into India.[79] One such story was Burma Rani, which depicted civilian resistance offered to Japanese occupation by the British and Indians present in Myanmar.[79] Pre-independence businessmen such as J. F. Madan and Abdulally Esoofally traded in global cinema.[24] Indian cinema's early contacts with other regions became visible with its films making early inroads into the Soviet Union, Middle East, Southeast Asia,[80] and China. Mainstream Hindi film stars like Raj Kapoor gained international fame across Asia[81][82] and Eastern Europe.[83][84] Indian films also appeared in international fora and film festivals.[80] This allowed 'Parallel' Bengali filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray to achieve worldwide fame, with his films gaining success among European, American and Asian audiences.[85] Ray's work subsequently had a worldwide impact, with filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese,[86] James Ivory,[87] Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, Franois Truffaut,[88] Steven Spielberg,[49][50][51] Carlos Saura,[89] Jean-Luc Godard,[90] Isao Takahata,[91] Gregory Nava, Ira Sachs and Wes Anderson[92] being influenced by his cinematic style, and many others such as Akira Kurosawa praising his work.[93] The "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy".[46] Subrata Mitra's cinematographic technique of bounce lighting also originates from The Apu Trilogy.[47] Ray's film Kanchenjungha (1962) also introduced a narrative structure that resembles later hyperlink cinema.[94] Since the 1980s, some previously overlooked Indian filmmakers such as Ritwik Ghatak posthumously gained international acclaim. Many Asian and 'South Asian' countries increasingly came to find Indian cinema as more suited to their sensibilities than Western cinema.[80] Jigna Desai holds that by the 21st century Indian cinema had managed to become 'deterritorialized', spreading over to the many parts of the world where Indian diaspora was present in significant numbers, and becoming an alternative to other international cinema.[97] Indian cinema has more recently begun influencing Western musical films, and played a particularly instrumental role in the revival of the genre in the Western world. Baz Luhrmann stated that his successful musical film Moulin Rouge! (2001) was directly inspired by Bollywood musicals.[98] The critical and financial success of Moulin Rouge! renewed interest in the then-moribund Western musical genre, subsequently fueling a renaissance of the genre.[99] Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire (2008) was also directly inspired by Indian films,[70][100] and is considered to be a "homage to Hindi commercial cinema".[101] Other Indian filmmakers are also making attempts at reaching a more global audience, with upcoming films by directors such as Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Jahnu Barua, Sudhir Mishra and Pan Nalin.[102]
[95]

and Guru Dutt [96] have

Indian Cinema was also recognized at the American Academy Awards. Three Indian films, Mother India (1957), Salaam Bombay! (1988), andLagaan (2001), were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Indian winners of the Academy Awards includeBhanu Athaiya (costume designer), Satyajit Ray (filmmaker), A. R. Rahman (music composer), Resul Pookutty (sound editor) and Gulzar(lyricist).[103]

[edit]Influences

Prasads IMAX Theatre houses atHyderabad, one of the largest IMAX-3D in the world (along with the world's largest in Sydney, Australia).[104]

PVR Cinemas in Bangalore is one of the largest cinema chains in India

Based in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh in India,Ramoji Film City, the world's largest integrated film studio. [105]

There have generally been six major influences that have shaped the conventions of Indian popular cinema. The first was the ancient Indian epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana which have exerted a profound influence

on the thought and imagination of Indian popular cinema, particularly in its narratives. Examples of this influence include the techniques of a side story, back-story and story within a story. Indian popular films often have plots which branch off into sub-plots; such narrative dispersals can clearly be seen in the 1993 films Khalnayak and Gardish. The second influence was the impact of ancient Sanskrit drama, with its highly stylized nature and emphasis on spectacle, where music, dance and gesture combined "to create a vibrant artistic unit with dance and mime being central to the dramatic experience." Sanskrit dramas were known as natya, derived from the root word nrit (dance), characterizing them as spectacular dance-dramas which has continued in Indian cinema.[106] The Rasa method of performance, dating back to ancient Sanskrit drama, is one of the fundamental features that differentiate Indian cinema from that of the Western world. In the Rasa method, empathetic "emotions are conveyed by the performer and thus felt by the audience," in contrast to the Western Stanislavski method where the actor must become "a living, breathing embodiment of a character" rather than "simply conveying emotion." The rasa method of performance is clearly apparent in the performances of popular Hindi film actors like Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan, nationally acclaimed Hindi films like Rang De Basanti (2006),[107] and internationally acclaimed Bengali films directed by Satyajit Ray.[108] The third influence was the traditional folk theatre of India, which became popular from around the 10th century with the decline of Sanskrit theatre. These regional traditions include the Yatra ofBengal, the Ramlila of Uttar Pradesh, and the Terukkuttu of Tamil Nadu. The fourth influence was Parsitheatre, which "blended realism and fantasy, music and dance, narrative and spectacle, earthy dialogue and ingenuity of stage presentation, integrating them into a dramatic discourse of melodrama. The Parsi plays contained crude humour, melodious songs and music, sensationalism and dazzling stagecraft."[106] All of these influences are clearly evident in the masala film genre that was popularized by Manmohan Desai's films in the 1970s and early 1980s, particularly in Coolie (1983), and to an extent in more recent critically acclaimed films such as Rang De Basanti.[107] The fifth influence was Hollywood, where musicals were popular from the 1920s to the 1950s, though Indian filmmakers departed from their Hollywood counterparts in several ways. "For example, the Hollywood musicals had as their plot the world of entertainment itself. Indian filmmakers, while enhancing the elements of fantasy so pervasive in Indian popular films, used song and music as a natural mode of articulation in a given situation in their films. There is a strong Indian tradition of narrating mythology, history, fairy stories and so on through song and dance." In addition, "whereas Hollywood filmmakers strove to conceal the constructed nature of their work so that the realistic narrative was wholly dominant, Indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction.

However, they demonstrated how this creation intersected with people's day to day lives in complex and interesting ways."[109] The final influence was Western musical television, particularly MTV, which has had an increasing influence since the 1990s, as can be seen in the pace, camera angles, dance sequences and music of recent Indian films. An early example of this approach was in Mani Ratnam's Bombay (1995).[110] Like mainstream Indian popular cinema, Indian Parallel Cinema was also influenced also by a combination of Indian theatre (particularly Sanskrit drama) and Indian literature (particularly Bengali literature), but differs when it comes to foreign influences, where it is more influenced by European cinema (particularly Italian neorealism and French poetic realism) rather than Hollywood. Satyajit Ray cited Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) and French filmmaker Jean Renoir's The River (1951), which he assisted, as influences on his debut film Pather Panchali (1955). Besides the influence of European cinema and Bengali literature, Ray is also indebted to the Indian theatrical tradition, particularly the Rasa method of classical Sanskrit drama. The complicated doctrine of Rasa "centers predominantly on feeling experienced not only by the characters but also conveyed in a certain artistic way to the spectator. The duality of this kind of a rasaimbrication" shows in The Apu Trilogy.[108] Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953) was also influenced by De Sica's Bicycle Thieves and in turn paved the way for the Indian New Wave, which began around the same time as the French New Wave and the Japanese New Wave.[44]Ray known as one of the most important influences to Parallel Cinema, was depicted as an auteur (Wollen). The focus of the majority of his stories portrayed the lower middle class and the unemployed (Wollen). It wasnt until the late 1960s that Parallel Cinema support grew (Wollen).[111]

[edit]Regional

industries

Break-up of 2010 Indian feature films certified by the Central Board of Film Certification sorted by languages.[112]

Position

Language

No. of films

Hindi

215

Tamil

202

Telugu

181

Kannada

143

Break-up of 2010 Indian feature films certified by the Central Board of Film Certification sorted by languages.[112]

Position

Language

No. of films

Marathi

116

Bengali

110

Malayalam

105

Bhojpuri

64

Gujarati

62

10

Oriya

26

11

Punjabi

15

12

English

13

Assamese

14

Haryanvi

15

Chattisgarhi

16

Konkani

17

Rajasthani

Break-up of 2010 Indian feature films certified by the Central Board of Film Certification sorted by languages.[112]

Position

Language

No. of films

18

Tulu

20

others

1 each

Total [edit]Assamese

1274

cinema

Jyoti Prasad became the first director of Assamese cinema

Main article: Cinema of Assam

First Assamese motion picture - Joymati filmed in 1935

Agarwala putting the finishing touches to the editing of Joymati

The Assamese language film industry traces its origins works s of revolutionary visionary Rupkonwar Jyotiprasad Agarwala, who was also a distinguished poet, playwright, composer and freedom fighter. He was instrumental in the production of the first Assamese film Joymati[113] in 1935, under the banner of Critrakala Movietone. Due to the lack of trained technicians, Jyotiprasad, while making his maiden film, had to shoulder the added responsibilities as the script writer, producer, director, choreographer, editor, set and costume designer, lyricist and music director. The film, completed with a budget of 60,000 rupees was released on 10 March 1935. The picture failed miserably. Like so many early Indian films, the negatives and complete prints of Joymati are missing. Some effort has been made privately by Altaf Mazid to restore and subtitle whatever is left of the prints.[3] Despite the significant financial loss from Joymati, the second picture Indramalati was filmed between 1937 and 1938 finally released in 1939. Although the beginning of the 21st century has seen Bollywood-style Assamese movies hitting the screen, the industry has not been able to compete in the market, significantly overshadowed by the larger industries such as Bollywood.[114] Assamese cinema has never really managed to make the breakthrough on the national scene despite its film industry making a mark in the National Awards over the years

[edit]Bengali

cinema

Satyajit Ray, Bengali filmmaker.

Main articles: Bengali cinema and Cinema of West Bengal The Bengali language cinematic tradition of Tollygunge located in West Bengal has had reputable filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen among its most acclaimed.[115] Recent Bengali films that have captured national attention include Rituparno Ghosh's Choker Bali, starring Aishwarya Rai.[116] Bengali filmmaking also includes Bangla science fiction films and films that focus on social issues.[117] In 1993, the Bengali industry's net output was 57 films.[118] The history of cinema in Bengal dates back to the 1890s, when the first "bioscopes" were shown in theatres inKolkata. Within a decade, the first seeds of the industry was sown by Hiralal Sen, considered a stalwart ofVictorian era cinema when he set up the Royal Bioscope Company, producing scenes from the stage productions of a number of popular shows at the Star Theatre, Calcutta, Minerva Theatre, Classic Theatre. Following a long gap after Sen's works, Dhirendra Nath Ganguly (Known as D.G) established Indo British Film Co, the first Bengali owned production company, in 1918. However, the first Bengali Feature film,Billwamangal, was produced in 1919, under the banner of Madan Theatre. Bilat Ferat was the IBFC's first production in 1921. The Madan Theatres production of Jamai Shashthi was the first Bengali talkie.[119] In 1932, the name "Tollywood" was coined for the Bengali film industry due to Tollygunge rhyming with "Hollywood" and because it was the center of the Indian film industry at the time. It later inspired the name "Bollywood", as Mumbai (then called Bombay) later overtook Tollygunge as the center of the Indian film industry, and many other Hollywood-inspired names.[120] The 'Parallel Cinema' movement began in the Bengali film industry in the 1950s. A long history has been traversed since then, with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak and others having earned international acclaim and securing their place in the history of film.

[edit]Bhojpuri

cinema

Main article: Bhojpuri cinema Bhojpuri language films predominantly cater to people who live in the regions of western Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. These films also have a large audience in the cities of Delhi and Mumbai due to migration to these metros from the Bhojpuri speaking region. Besides India, there is a large market for these films in other bhojpuri speaking countries of the West Indies, Oceania, and South America.[121] Bhojpuri language film's history begins in 1962 with the well-received film Ganga Maiyya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo ("Mother Ganges, I will offer you a yellow sari"), which was directed by Kundan Kumar.[122] Throughout the following decades, films were produced only in fits and starts. Films such as Bidesiya ("Foreigner," 1963, directed by S. N. Tripathi) and Ganga ("Ganges," 1965, directed by Kundan Kumar) were profitable and popular, but in general Bhojpuri films were not commonly produced in the 1960s and 1970s.

The industry experienced a revival in 2001 with the super hit Saiyyan Hamar ("My Sweetheart," directed by Mohan Prasad), which shot the hero of that film, Ravi Kissan, to superstardom.[123] This success was quickly followed by several other remarkably successful films, including Panditji Batai Na Biyah Kab Hoi ("Priest, tell me when I will marry," 2005, directed by Mohan Prasad) and Sasura Bada Paisa Wala("My father-in-law, the rich guy," 2005). In a measure of the Bhojpuri film industry's rise, both of these did much better business in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar than mainstream Bollywood hits at the time, and both films, made on extremely tight budgets, earned back more than ten times their production costs.[124] Although a smaller industry compared to other Indian film industries, the extremely rapid success of their films has led to dramatic increases in Bhojpuri cinema's visibility, and the industry now supports an awards show[125] and a trade magazine, Bhojpuri City.[126]

[edit]Gujarati

cinema

Main article: Gujarati cinema The film industry of Gujarat started its journey in 1932. Since then Gujarati films immensely contributed to Indian cinema. Gujarati cinema has gained popularity among the regional film industry in India. Gujarati cinema is always based on scripts from mythology to history and social to political. Since its origin Gujarati cinema has experimented with stories and issues from the Indian society. Furthermore, Gujarat has immense contribution to Bollywood as several Gujarati actors have brought glamour to the Indian film industry. Gujarati film industry has included the work of actors including Sanjeev Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Bindu, Asha Parekh, Kiran Kumar, Arvind Trivedi, Aruna Irani, Mallika Sarabhai, and Asrani. The scripts and stories dealt in the Gujarati films are intrinsically humane. They include relationship- and familyoriented subjects with human aspirations and deal with Indian family culture. Thus, there can be no turning away from the essential humanity of these Gujarati cinema. The first Gujarati movie, Narasinh Mehta, was released in the year 1932 and was directed by Nanubhai Vakil. The film starred Mohanlala, Marutirao, Master Manhar, and Miss Mehtab. It was of the `Saint film` genre and was based on the life of the saint Narasinh Mehta who observed a creed that was followed centuries later by Mahatma Gandhi. The film was matchless as it avoided any depiction of miracles. In 1935, another social movie, Ghar Jamai was released, directed by Homi Master. The film starred Heera, Jamna, Baby Nurjehan, Amoo, Alimiya, Jamshedji, and Gulam Rasool. The film featured a `resident son-in-law` (ghar jamai) and his escapades as well as his problematic attitude toward the freedom of women. It was a comedy-oriented movie that was a major success in the industry. Gujarati films thus proceeded with several other important social, political as well as religious issues. The years 1948, 1950, 1968, 1971 moved in a wide variety of dimensions. The Gujarati movies such as Kariyavar, directed by Chaturbhuj Doshi, Vadilona Vank directed by Ramchandra Thakur, Gadano Bel directed by Ratibhai Punatar and Leeludi Dharti directed by Vallabh Choksi brought immense success to the industry. The

problems of modernisation are the underlying concern of several films. The movies like Gadano Bel had strong realism and reformism. Gujarati films such as Leeludi Dharti reflect the rural world with its fertility rituals. In 1975 Tanariri, directed by Chandrakant Sangani presents highlights the little-known side of Akbar who is usually presented as a consistently benign ruler. The first cinemascope film of Gujarati cinema was Sonbaini Chundadi, directed by Girish Manukant released in 1976. Besides these, Bhavni Bhavai released in 1980 was directed by Ketan Mehta. It boasted superlative performances, fine camerawork and won two awards: National Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration and an award at the Nantes Three Continents Festival in France. In 1992, Hun Hunshi Hunshilal, directed by Sanjiv Shah was sought to be post-modern. Gujarati films were further enriched by the brilliant performances of the film personalities. Anupama, Upendra Trivedi, Arvind Trivedi, Naresh Kanodia (Gujarati superstar), Sneh Lata (great Gujarati actress), Ramesh Mehta and Veljibhai Gajjar, Dilip Patel, Ranjitraj, Sohil Virani, Narayan Rajgor, Premshankar Bhatt, Jay Patel, Ashvin Patel, Girija Mitra, Anjana, Manmohan Desai, Sanjay Gadhvi, Kalyanji Anandji, Deepika Chikhalia, Bindu Desai, Renuka Sahane and Priti Parekh are celebrities who have contributed a lot to the Gujarati film industry.

[edit]Hindi

cinema

Main article: Bollywood The Hindi language film industry of Mumbaialso known as Bollywoodis the largest and most popular branch of Indian cinema.[127] Hindi cinema initially explored issues of caste and culture in films such as Achhut Kanya (1936) and Sujata (1959).[128] International visibility came to the industry with Raj Kapoor's Awara.[129] Hindi cinema grew during the 1990s with the release of as many as 215 films.[19] With Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Hindi cinema registered its commercial presence in the Western world.[19] In 1995 the Indian economy began showing sustainable annual growth, and Hindi cinema, as a commercial enterprise, grew at a growth rate of 15% annually.[19] The salary of lead stars increased greatly. Many actors signed contracts for simultaneous work in 34 films.[20]Institutions such as the Industrial Development Bank of India also came forward to finance Hindi films.[20] A number of magazines such asFilmfare, Stardust, Cineblitz, etc., became popular.[130] The audience's reaction towards Hindi cinema is distinctive with involvement in the films by audience's clapping, singing, reciting familiar dialogue with the actors, and throwing coins at the screen (in appreciation of spectacle).[131]

[edit]Kannada

cinema

Main article: Kannada cinema

Statue of Rajkumar at KG Road (near Santosh theatre) in Bengaluru

Kannada film industry (

), also referred as Sandalwood, is based inBengaluru(

) and

caters mostly to the state of Karnataka(

). Rajkumar was eminent in Kannada film industry. In his career,

he performed versatile characters and sung hundreds of songs for film and albums. Other notable Kannada and Tulu actors include Vishnuvardhan,Ambarish, Ravichandran, Girish Karnad, Prakash Raj, Shankar Nag, Ananth Nag, Upendra,Darshan, Shivaraj Kumar, Puneet Rajkumar, Kalpana, Bharathi, Jayanthi, Pandari Bai, Tara,Umashri and Ramya. Film directors from the Kannada film industry like Girish Kasaravalli have garnered national recognition. Other noted directors include Puttanna Kanagal, G. V. Iyer, Girish Karnad, T. S. Nagabharana, Yograj Bhat, Soori. G.K. Venkatesh, Vijaya Bhaskar, Rajan-Nagendra,Hamsalekha, Gurukiran, Anoop Seelin and V. Harikrishna are other noted music directors. Kannada cinema, along with Bengali and Malayalam films, contributed simultaneously to the age of Indian parallel cinema. Some of the influential Kannada films in this genre are Samskara (based on a novel by U. R. Ananthamurthy), Chomana Dudi by B. V. Karanth, Tabarana Kathe,Vamshavruksha, Kadu Kudure, Hamsageethe, Bhootayyana Maga Ayyu, Accident, Maanasa Sarovara, Ghatashraddha, Tabarana Kathe,Mane, Kraurya, Thaayi Saheba, Dweepa. Other commercially successful films include Aapthamitra, Yajamaana, Om, A, Super (all directed by Upendra), Mungaru Male (directed by Yograj Bhat), Jogi (by Prem), Nenapirali (by Ratnaja), Duniya and Jackie (both directed by Soori).

[edit]Konkani

cinema

Main article: Konkani cinema Konkani language films are mainly produced in Goa. It is one of the smallest film industries in India with just 4 films produced in 2009.[14]Konkani language is spoken mainly in the states of Goa, Maharashtra and Karnataka and to a smaller extent in Kerala. The first full length Konkani film

was Mogacho Anvddo, released on April 24, 1950, and was produced and directed by Jerry Braganza, a native of Mapusa, under the banner of Etica Pictures.[132][133] Hence, 24 April is celebrated as Konkani Film Day.[134]

[edit]Malayalam

cinema

Main article: Malayalam cinema

Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Malayalam film director

The Malayalam film industry, based in the southern state of Kerala, is known for films that bridge the gap between parallel cinema and mainstream cinema by portraying thought-provoking social issues. Filmmakers include Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shaji N. Karun, G. Aravindan, K. G. George, Padmarajan, Sathyan Anthikad,T. V. Chandran and Bharathan. Vigathakumaran, a silent movie released in 1928 produced and directed by J. C. Daniel, marked the beginning of Malayalam cinema.[135] Balan, released in 1938, was the first Malayalam "talkie".[136][137] Malayalam films were mainly produced by Tamil producers till 1947, when the first major film studio, Udaya Studio, was established in Kerala.[138] In 1954, the film Neelakkuyil captured national interest by winning the President's silver medal. Scripted by the well-known Malayalam novelist, Uroob, and directed by P. Bhaskaran and Ramu Kariat, it is often considered as the first authentic Malayali film.[139] Newspaper Boy, made by a group of students in 1955, was the first neo-realistic film in India.[140] Chemmeen (1965), directed by Ramu Kariat and based on a story by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, went on to become immensely popular, and became the first South Indian film to win the National Film Award for Best Film.[141] This early period of Malayalam cinema was dominated by actors Prem Nazir, Sathyan, Madhu, Sheela, Sharada and Jayabharathi. Prem Nazir is regarded as one of the most successful film actors in India.[142] He holds four major acting records; including for playing the lead role in over 700 films and for acting opposite eighty heroines.[143] The 1970s saw the emergence of New Wave Cinema. Swayamvaram (1972), the directorial debut of Adoor Gopalakrishnan pioneered the new wave cinema movement in Kerala.[144] Other movies of the period include Nirmalyam by M. T. Vasudevan Nair (1973),[145] Uttarayanam by G. Aravindan

(1974),[146] Swapnadanam (1976) by K. G. George (1976),[147] Cheriyachante Kroorakrithyangal (1979) and Amma Ariyan (1986) byJohn Abraham etc.[148][149] In the late 1970s, commercial cinema began gaining popularity due to the action films of Jayan, a stunt actor who became one of the first commercial stars of Malayalam cinema. Known for performing stunts, his success was short-lived, ending with his untimely death while performing a dangerous helicopter stunt in Kolilakkam (1980).[150]

Shaji N.Karun, Malayalam film director

The period from late 1980s to early 1990s is popularly regarded as the 'Golden Age of Malayalam Cinema'[151]with the emergence of actors such as Mammootty, Mohanlal,and filmmakers such as I.V. Sasi, Bharathan,Padmarajan, K. G. George, Sathyan Anthikad, Priyadarshan, A. K. Lohithadas, SiddiqueLal and Sreenivasan. This period of popular cinema is characterized by the adaptation of everyday life themes and exploration of social and individual relationships.[152] These movies interlaced themes of individual struggle with creative humour as in Nadodikkattu (1988). Piravi (1989) by Shaji N. Karun was the first Malayalam film to win theCamra d'Or-Mention at the Cannes Film Festival.[153] This period also marked the beginning of movies rich in well-crafted humour like Ramji Rao Speaking (1989). It was in Malayalam that the first 3D movie in India, My Dear Kuttichathan, was made by Navodaya Appachan, a notable film producer of Kerala.[154] Guru, directed byRajiv Anchal, is the first Malayalam movie submitted by India in contest for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film [155] followed by first-time filmmaker Salim Ahamed's family drama film Adaminte Makan Abu(2011).[156] Among all the playback singers in India, Malayalam singers K. J. Yesudas and K. S. Chithra hold the highest record for winning the National Award for best singers in the male and female category respectively. While Yesudas has won 7 awards so far, Chithra has won 6 awards till date. During late 1990s and 2000s, Malayalam cinema witnessed a shift towards formulaic movies and slapstick comedies. The Malayalam film industry in recent times has also been affected by the rise of satellite television and widespread film piracy.[157]

[edit]Marathi

cinema

Main article: Marathi cinema Marathi cinema ( ) refers to films produced in the Marathi language in the state of Maharashtra,

India. Marathi Cinema is one of the oldest industry in Indian Cinema. In fact the pioneer of cinema in Union of India was Dadasaheb Phalke, who brought the revolution of moving images to India with his first indigenously made silent film Raja Harishchandra in 1913, which is considered by IFFI and NIFD part of Marathi cinema as it was made by a Marathi crew. The first Marathi talkie film, Ayodhyecha Raja[1] (produced by Prabhat Films) was released in 1932, just one year after "Alam Ara" the first Hindi talkie film. Marathi cinema has grown in recent years, with two of its films, namely "Shwaas" (2004) and "Harishchandrachi Factory" (2009), being sent as India's official entries for the Oscars. Today the industry is based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, but it sprouted and grew first from Kolhapur and then Pune. There are many marathi movies, the list of best films in Marathi will be very big very few can be named like 'Sangate Aika','Ek Gao Bara Bhangdi,'Pinjara' of V. Shantaram,'Sinhasan', 'Paathlaag' 'Jait Re Jait' 'Saamana',Santh Wahate Krishnamai','Sant Tukaram','Shyamchi Aai' by Acharya Atre, based on Sane Guruji's best novel Shamchi Aai, and so on. Maharashtra has immense contribution to Bollywood as several Maharashtrian actors have brought glamour to the Indian film industry. Marathi film industry has included the work of actors including, Nutan, Tanuja, V Shantaram, Nana Patekar, Smita Patil, Madhuri Dixit, Shreyas Talpade, Sonali Kulkarni, Sonali Bendre, Urmila matondkar, Reema Lagoo, Lalita Pawar, Mamta Kulkarni,Nanda,Padmini Kolhapure, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Sachin Khedekar, Durga Khote, and Others

[edit]Oriya

cinema

Main article: Oriya cinema The Oriya Film Industry refers to the Bhubaneswar and Cuttack based Oriya language film industry. Sometimes called Ollywood aportmanteau of the words Oriya and Hollywood, although the origins of the name are disputed.[158] The first Oriya talkie Sita Bibaha was made by Mohan Sunder Deb Goswami in 1936. Prashanta Nanda started the revolution in the Oriya film industry by not only securing a huge audience but also bringing in a newness in his presentation. His movies heralded in the golden era of the Oriya commercial industry by bringing in freshness to Oriya movies.[159] Then the 1st color film was made by Nagen Ray and photographed by a Pune Film Institute trained cinematographer Mr. Surendra Sahu titled " Gapa Hele Be Sata"- meaning although its a story, its true. But the golden phase of Oriya Cinema was 1984 when two Oriya films 'Maya Miriga' and 'Dhare Alua' was showcased in 'Indian Panorama' and Nirad Mohapatra's 'Maya Miriga' was invited for the 'Critics Week' in Cannes. The film received 'Best Third World Film'award at Mannheim Film Festival, Jury Award at Hawaii and was shown at London Film Festival.

[edit]Punjabi

cinema

Main article: Punjabi cinema K.D. Mehra made the first Punjabi film Sheila (also known as Pind di Kudi). Baby Noor Jehan was introduced as an actress and singer in this film. Sheila was made in Calcutta and released in Lahore, the capital of Punjab; it ran very successfully and was a hit across the province. Due to the success of this first film many more producers started making Punjabi films. As of 2009, Punjabi cinema has produced between 900 and 1,000 movies. The average number of releases per year in the 1970s was nine; in the 1980s, eight; and in the 1990s, six. In 1995, the number of films released was 11; it plummeted to seven in 1996 and touched a low of five in 1997. Since 2000s the Punjabi cinema has seen a revival with more releases every year featuring bigger budgets, home grown stars as well as Bollywood actors of Punjabi descent taking part. The cinema saw its first production of a 3D feature film in 2011 titled Pehchaan 3D

[edit]Sindhi

Cinema

Main article: Sindhi cinema Though Striving hard to survive, mainly because not having a state or region to represent, Sindhi film industry has been producing movies in intervals of time. The very first Sindhi movie produced in India was 1958 film Abana which was a success throughout the country. In the later time Sindhi cinema has seen the production of some Bollywood style films like Hal ta Bhaji Haloon, Parewari, Dil Dije Dil Waran Khe, Ho Jamalo, Pyar Kare Dis: Feel the Power of Love and The Awakening. There are a numerous personalities from Sindhi dissent who have been and are contributing in Bollywood G P Sippy, Ramesh Sippy, Nikhil Advani, Tarun Mansukhani, Ritesh Sidhwani, Asrani and many more.

[edit]Tamil

cinema

Main article: Tamil cinema The Tamil language film industry, known as Tamil cinema, is India's second-largest film industry in terms of revenue, production and worldwide distribution including worldwide box office,. [160][161] It is based in the Kodambakkam district of Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Tamil films are distributed to various parts of Asia, Southern Africa, Northern America, Europe and Oceania.[162] The industry has inspired Tamil filmmaking in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and Canada. Tamil cinema and Dravidian politics have heavily influenced each other.[163] With Chennai serving as a secondary hub for filmmaking for other industries and the establishment of the Madras Film Institute, Tamil cinema established itself as an influential and leading industry in South Indian cinema and further attained international exposure with the works of various filmmakers. In 1985, the Tamil film industry made its peak, with a net output was 236 films.[118] Tamil films stand next to Hindi films in terms of the number of films submitted by India in contest for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[164]

Rajinikanth, a film star in India with large following, receives an average salary of

350 million (US$6.98

million) per film, which makes him the second highest paid actor in Asia after Jackie Chan and also has nearly 65,000 fan clubs worldwide.[165] Kamal Haasan, one of the versatile actors in India known for being awarded the most number of Southern Filmfare Awards and the only actor with the most number of National Film Awards (three for Best Actor, one for Best Child Artist and one for Best Film). Music directors from Tamil Nadu, such as Ilaiyaraaja and two-time Academy Award-winner A. R. Rahman made a foray into other regional industries and have a reputation and following, while also being predominantly active in Tamil cinema. Film directors who have made significant contributions to the industry include A. Bhimsingh, A. P. Nagarajan, A. C. Tirulokchandar, C. V. Sridhar, K. Balachander, S. P. Muthuraman, P. Bharathiraja, Balu Mahendra, J. Mahendran, K. Bhagyaraj, Manivannan, Mani Ratnam, R. Sundarrajan, K. S. Ravikumar, R. Parthiban, S. Shankar, Gautham Vasudev Menon and Vikraman. Of late, films directed by Bala, Ameer Sultan and Vasanthabalan have participated in many film festivals across the globe, winning international acclaim. Some female Bollywood actress have their origin from Tamil, even though some of them not had their initial debut in Tamil cinema. It includesVyjayanthimala, Hema Malini, Rekha Ganesan, Sridevi, Meenakshi Sheshadri, and . Actress Vyjayanthimala, Hema Malini and Sridevi are also considered "Numero Uno actresses" of Hindi cinema along with Madhuri Dixit.[166][167]

[edit]Telugu

cinema

Main article: Cinema of Andhra Pradesh The Telugu language film industry of Andhra Pradesh is one of the three largest film industries in India. As of 2010, it is India's third largest film industry in terms of films produced yearly.[168] The state of Andhra Pradesh has the highest number of cinema halls in India. In 2006, the Telugu film industry produced the largest number of films in India, with about 245 films produced that year.[169] The largest film production facility in the world, Ramoji Film City, is in Hyderabad, the capital city of Andhra Pradesh.[170] B. N. Reddy, H. M. Reddy, K. V. Reddy, L. V. Prasad, D. V. S. Raju, Yaragudipati Varada Rao, Edida Nageshwara Rao, P. S. Ramakrishna Rao (Bharani Pictures), C. Pullaiah, P. Pullaiah, B. Vittalacharya, Adurthi Subba Rao, V. Madhusudan Rao, Kamalakara Kameshwara Rao,K. Viswanath, Bapu, Jandhyala, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, Dasari Narayana Rao, K. Raghavendra Rao, Ramoji Rao, Pasupuleti Krishna Vamsi, S. V. Krishna Reddy, Puri Jagannadh, K. Vijaya Bhaskar, Ramgopal Varma, SS Rajamouli, Sekhar Kammula, Mohan Krishna Indraganti, Nagesh Kukunoor and Trivikram Srinivas are filmmakers who have made important contributions to cinema. Bhakta Prahlada, Mayabazar, Narthanasala, Patala Bhairavi, Lava Kusha, Missamma, Bhookailas, Tenali Ramakrishna, Gulebakavali Katha, Daana Veera Soora Karna, Muthyala Muggu, Sankarabharanam, Ananda Bhairavi, Swathi Muthyam, Mayuri, Swarnakamalam,Meghasandesam, Sapthapadhi, Rudraveena, Alluri

Seetharama Raju, Sagara Sangamam, Shiva, Kshana Kshanam, Annamayya, Pokiri,Magadheera etc. are some of the films from the Telugu industry which have received national recognition. [171] Actors like NTR, ANR, S. V. Ranga Rao, Kanta Rao, Kongara Jaggayya, Kaikala Satyanarayana, Krishna, Chiranjeevi, Sobhan Babu,Krishnam Raju, Murali Mohan, Bhanumati, Sharada, Savitri, Jamuna, Anjali Devi, Krishna Kumari, Sowcar Janaki, Roja Ramani,Suryakantham, Vanisri, Lakshmi, Manjula Vijayakumar, Mohan Babu, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Akkineni Nagarjuna, Nandamuri Balakrishna,Daggubati Venkatesh, Sidharth, Pawan Kalyan, Mahesh Babu, Vijayashanti, Gouthami Tadimalla, Bhanupriya, Jaya Prada, Jayasudha andAllari Naresh have made important contributions to Telugu cinema. Bomireddi Narasimha Reddy, Paidi Jairaj, L. V. Prasad, B. Nagi Reddy, Akkineni Nageswara Rao, and D. Ramanaidu have won Dadasaheb Phalke Award from this industry.

[edit]Genres [edit]Masala

and styles

films

Main article: Masala (film genre) Masala is a style of Indian cinema, especially in Bollywood and South Indian films, in which there is a mix of various genres in one film. For example, a film can portray action, comedy, drama, romance and melodrama all together. Many of these films also tend to be musicals, including songs filmed in picturesque locations, which is now very common in Bollywood films. Plots for such movies may seem illogical and improbable to unfamiliar viewers. The genre is named after the masala, a term used to describe a mixture of spices in Indian cuisine.

[edit]Parallel

cinema

Main article: Parallel Cinema Parallel Cinema, also known as Art Cinema or the Indian New Wave, is a specific movement in Indian cinema, known for its serious content of realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the social-political climate of the times. This movement is distinct from mainstream Bollywood cinema and began around the same time as the French New Wave and Japanese New Wave. The movement was initially led by Bengali cinema (which has produced internationally acclaimed filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, and others) and then gained prominence in the other film industries of India. Some of the films in this movement have garnered commercial success, successfully stradling art and commercial cinema. An early example of this was Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953), which was both a commercial success and a critical success, winning the International Prize at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. The film's success paved the way for the Indian New Wave.[43][44][172]

The neo-realist filmmakers were the Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray, closely followed by Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal,Shaji N.Karun, Adoor Gopalakrishnan[39] and Girish Kasaravalli[173] Ray's films include The Apu Trilogy, consisting of Pather Panchali (1955),Aparajito (1956) and The World of Apu (1959). The three films won major prizes at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals, and are frequently listed among the greatest films of all time.[66][67][174][175]

[edit]Film

music

See also: Filmi Music in Indian cinema is a substantial revenue generator, with the music rights alone accounting for 45% of the net revenues generated by a film in India.[20] The major film music companies of India are Saregama, Sony Music etc.[20] Commercially, film music accounts for 48% India's net music sales. [20] A typical Indian film may have around 5-6 choreographed songs spread throughout the film's length.[176] The demands of a multicultural, increasingly globalized Indian audience often led to a mixing of various local and international musical traditions.[176] Local dance and music nevertheless remain a time tested and recurring theme in India and have made their way outside of India's borders with its diaspora.[176] Playback singers such as Lata Mangeshkar drew large crowds with national and international film music stage shows.[176] The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 21st saw extensive interaction between artists from India and the western world.[177] Artists from Indian diaspora blended the traditions of their heritage to those of their country to give rise to popular contemporary music.[177]

[edit]Awards
This section lists the most important film awards given for Indian cinema by national and state authorities.

Award

Year of Inception

Awarded by

Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards

1937

Government of West Bengal

National Film Awards

1954

Directorate of Film Festivals, Government of India

Maharashtra State Film Awards

1963

Government of Maharashtra

Nandi Awards

1964

Government of Andhra Pradesh

Tamil Nadu State Film Awards

1967

Government of Tamil Nadu

Karnataka State Film Awards

1967

Government of Karnataka

Kerala State Film Awards

1969

Government of Kerala

Below are the major non-governmental awards.

Award

Year of Inception

Awarded by

Filmfare Awards 1954 Filmfare Awards South

Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd.

Screen Awards

1994

Screen Weekly

IIFA Awards [edit]Film

2000

Wizcraft International Entertainment Pvt Ltd

Institutes in India

Several institutes, both government run and private, provide formal education in various aspects of filmmaking. Some of them include

Film and Television Institute of India, Pune Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata Madras Film Institute, Chennai AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi Whistling Woods International Asian Academy of Film & Television KIIT School of Film and Media Sciences, Bhubaneswar City Pulse Institute of Film & Television, Gandhinagar, Gujarat International School of Film + Media, Hyderabad

[edit]See

also

Precursors of film
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Film as an art form grew out of a long tradition of literature, storytelling, narrative drama, art, mythology, puppetry and shadow play. In addition, the technology of film emerged from developments and achievements much further back in human history. With possible prehistoric origin due to its occurring naturally, the camera obscura was used and described by Anthemius of Tralles,[1] and near the year 1600, it was referred to by Johannes Kepler and perfected by Giambattista della Porta. Light is inverted through a small hole orlens from outside, and projected onto a surface or screen, creating a projected moving image, indistinguishable from a projected high quality film to an audience, but it is not preserved in a recording. Tarkovsky, in Andrei Rublev, pays homage to this film precursor by including a camera obscura via a hole in the door of a medieval room. Plays and dances had elements common to films, including scripts, sets, lighting, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences,storyboards, and scores. They preceded film by thousands of years. Much terminology later used in film theory and criticism applied, such as mise en scene. Visual moving images and sound were not recorded for replaying as in film. Shadow dancing, using projected light in combination with acting or dancing, is an ancient art in many world cultures, and includes projectionfrom a light source. Puppetry, another ancient art form, shares elements with animation and claymation. Ting Huan () created an elementary zoetrope in China in 180 AD. A zoetrope is a cylinder lined with snapshots from a sequence of images of a motion, where the motion returns to its starting point at the end. The images are viewed through slits, so each image shows at a fixed time after the last, creating the image of motion, similar to blinking at a fixed interval while watching motion. If the "blinks" become close together, this creates the illusion of motion. Zoetropes lack projection of the image, and repeated after one turn of the cylinder. In 1740 and 1748, David Hume published Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, arguing for the associations and causes of ideas with visual images, forerunners to the language of film. Optics developed in the European Renaissance, with a theory of lenses. Electromagnetic theory led to Edison's light bulb. Photographic filmwas created in 19th century. Phonographic recording of sound was invented in 19th century.

[edit]Early

technological developments and developments in psychology

Shadow shows are known from the earliest recorded times, and the principle that an image is visually retained for a short time after observation has ceased was observed in ancient times.

c. 3200 BC An earthen bowl found in Shahr-i Sokhta, Iran, has five images of a goat painted along the sides. This is believed to be an example of early animation.[2][3][4]

c. 500 BC Mo-Ti, a Chinese philosopher, ponders the phenomenology of inverted light from the outside world beaming through a small hole in the opposite wall in a darkened room.

c. 360 BC Plato's allegory of the cave describes a cinema-like experience of an audience watching silhouetted images in a dark space.

c. 350 BC Aristotle of Greece tells of watching an image of an eclipse beamed onto the ground through a sieve.

c. 200 BC Shadow plays first appear during the Han Dynasty and later gain popularity across Asia. c. 180 AD Ting Huan () creates elementary zoetrope in China. 6th century- Anthemius of Tralles, a bizantine mathematician and architect (most famous for his work in the Hagia Sophia) carried out experiments in optics, and used a type of camera obscura.[1]

1021 Alhazen, an Iraqi scientist describes experiments with a camera obscura in his Book of Optics. 1515 Leonardo da Vinci describes a structure that would produce this effect. 1544 Reinerus Gemma-Frisius, a Dutch scientist, illustrates large rooms built for the purpose of viewing eclipses by this means.

1588 Giovanni Battista Della Porta describes a similar technique. c. 1610 Johannes Kepler refers to a construction that utilises this phenomenon as a camera obscura. c. 1610 Della Porta perfected the camera obscura using a convex lens. 1671 Athanasius Kircher projects images painted on glass plates with an oil lamp and a lens, his 'Magic Lantern'.

1724 Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers that certain silver salts, most notably silver chloride and silver nitrate, darken in the presence of light. This discovery was instrumental in the of development of photographs.

1740 and 1748, David Hume published Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, arguing for the associations and causes of ideas with and by visual images, forerunners to developments in the language of film.

1798 tienne-Gaspard Robert begins his revolutionary phantasmagoria shows and develops the "Fantoscope", a magic lantern on wheels.

1803 Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy obtain photographic images but are unable to fix them. 1824 Thaumatrope induction. Peter Mark Roget presents the persistence of vision to the world in his paper Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel when seen through

vertical apertures. The article is often incorrectly cited asPersistence of Vision with Regard to Moving Objects, or On the Persistence of Vision with Regard to Human Motion, and given an incorrect date.

1824/1827 Nicphore Nipce produces a permanent image on a bitumen-coated pewter plate exposed for eight hours.

1826 John Ayrton Paris markets the Thaumatrope, a card which, when spun, gives the illusion of movement.

1831 Faraday's Law of electromagnetic. Faraday experiments with the visual illusions created by a revolving wheel.

1832 Joseph Plateau: Anorthoscope and Phenakistiscope give the illusion of motion to repeated pictures with small differences on revolving disks. Also Spindle viewers and Flip books.

1833 Simon Stampler develops the Stroboscope, similar to the Phenakistiscope. 1834 William George Horner develops the Zoetrope, a.k.a., the Daedalum, a revolving cylinder which gives the illusion of motion to the pictures inside. In the same year, William Fox Talbot begins experimenting on fixing positive images onto sensitized paper.

1839 Henry Langdon Childe further develops the magic lantern by introducing dissolving views. In the same year, Louis Daguerredemonstrates the Daguerrotype which fixes an image onto a sensitized copper plate. John William Herschel calls his similar fixed images 'photographs'.

1841 Talbot develops the Calotype, which fixes an image with only a brief camera exposure. 1846 The invention of intermittent mechanisms, such as used in sewing machines. 1853 Franz von Uchatius develops the Kinetiscope [sic] which projects moving drawings. 1855 Alexander Parkes Develops Parkesine, later developed into celluloid which gets marketed in 1869 by John and Isaiah Hyatt.

[edit]Victorian

innovations, c.18601901

1861 Henri DuMont patents an apparatus for "reproducing successive phases of motion", British Patent 1,457.

1861 US inventor Samuel Goodale of Cincinnati, Ohio patents (US #31,310) a handturned stereoscope device which rapidly moves stereo images past a viewer.[5]

1861 The Kinematoscope is patented by Coleman Sellers of Philadelphia (US #31,357). This is a series of stereoscopic pictures on glass plates, linked together in a chain, and mounted in a box. The viewer turns a crank to see moving images.

1872 Eadweard Muybridge designs the zoopraxiscope. French astronomer Pierre Jules Cesar Janssen develops a camera with a revolving photographic plate that makes exposures at regular, automatic intervals.

1877 Muybridge begins experimenting with "serial photography" (or "chronophotography"), taking multiple exposed images of a runninghorse (see main Muybridge article).

1877 Charles-mile Reynaud develops the Praxinoscope, an animation device. 1878 George Eastman manufactures photographic dry plates the same year Thomas Edison invents the first electric incandescent light bulb, archaically known as a magic lantern.

1880 Muybridge begins projecting his studies of figures in motion. 1881 Louis Lumiere develops a "dry plate" process with gelatin emulsion. 1882 tienne-Jules Marey, a French physiologist, using chronophotographic gun makes a series of photographs of birds in flight.Hannibal Goodwin sells an idea to George Eastman, who markets it as "American film" : a roll of paper coated with emulsion.

1886 Louis Le Prince patented his process for "the successive production of objects in motion by means of a projector".

1887 Ottomar Anschtz creates the electrotachyscope, which presents the illusion of motion with transparent chronophotography.

First movies:

1888 Louis Le Prince exhibited (projected) films in October made with his receiver (camera) at the Whitley factory in Hunslet, Leeds and in Oakwood Grange, Leeds.

1888 Marey designs the Chronophotograph, a camera using roll film. 1888 Charles-mile Reynaud perfected his Praxinoscope theatre with the Thtre Optique. 1889 William Friese Greene developed the first "moving pictures" on celluloid film, exposing 20 ft (6.1 m) of film at Hyde Park, London. George Eastman improves on his paper roll film, substituting the paper with plastic.

1889 Kodak celluloid roll film becomes available. 1890 Friese Greene patents his process, but was unable to finance manufacturing of it, and later sold his patent.[6]

1890 The first 3D movie patent was registered in 1890 by William Friese-Greene. The system used duel projected images with the viewer using a stereoscope.

1891 Edison patents the Kinetograph developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, which takes moving pictures on a strip of film. A lighted box (the Kinetoscope) was used to view the pictures, the viewer was required to turned a handle to see the pictures "move". First called "arcade peepshows", these were to soon be known as nickelodeons. Fred Ott's Sneeze is the first Kinetographic film.

October 28, 1892. Charles-mile Reynaud's "Pantomimes Lumineuses" is the first public performance of a moving picture show at theMuse Grvin in Paris. It includes several short animated films, such as Pauvre Pierrot.

1893 Edison Laboratories builds a film studio, in West Orange, New Jersey, dubbed the Black Maria. It was built on a turntable so the window could rotate toward the sun throughout the day, supplying natural light for the productions. At the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, Muybridge gives a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall. He used hiszoopraxiscope to show his moving pictures to a paying public.[7]

1894 Louis Lumiere invents the cinematograph a single-unit camera, developer, and movie projector. Kinetoscopes, meanwhile, were popular and profitable. On January 7, W.K. Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film.

1895 The Arrival of a Train premiered on a large screen December 28 at the Grand Cafe in Paris, France. Louis and his brother Auguste Lumiere also filmed Workers Leaving the Lumire Factory that year, while in the US Woodville Latham combined a Kinetoscope with a projecting device. People were avidly watching nickelodeons on Broadway in New York City.

1896 Edison loses W. K. Dickson who joins with other inventors and investors to form the American Mutoscope Company. The company manufactured the mutoscope as a rival to the Kinetoscope and, like Edison, produced films for its invention. Expanding on the idea, American Mutoscope then developed the "biograph" which was a projector allowing films to be shown in theatres to a large audience rather than in single-user nickelodeons. Edison entered the competition for development of a large projector he called the Vitascope. This year also debuted the work of first female film director, Alice Guy-Blach's The Cabbage Fairy. Vitascope Hall in New Orleans opened in June of this year.

1897 US President William McKinley's inauguration was filmed, the first US newsreel. In England the Prestwich Camera is patented.

1898 Thomas Edison captures various scenes of the Spanish-American War which include training and marching troops, unloading ships, as well as some battle scenes. This marks the Spanish-American War as the first war to be documented on film.

1899 With the success of the biograph, American Mutoscope changed its name to American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. In England Edward R. Turner and F. Marshall Lee create chronophotographic images through red, green and blue filters and project them with together with a three-lens projector.

1900 Synchronized sound was first demonstrated in at the Paris Exposition with a sound-on-disc system.

History of film
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the history of cinema. For other uses, see History of photography.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. (Consider usingmore specific cleanup instructions.) Please help improve this article if you can. The talk page may contain suggestions. (March 2012) The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (September 2009)

Years in film

1870s

1880s

1890s

1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899

1900s

1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909

1910s

1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919

1920s

1920 1921 1922 1923 1924

1925 1926 1927 1928 1929

1930s

1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939

1940s

1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

1950s

1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959

1960s

1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

1970s

1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979

1980s

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

1990s

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

2000s

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

2010s

2010 2011 2012 2013 and beyond

The history of film is an account of the historical development of the medium known variously as cinema, motion pictures, film, or the movies. [1] The history of film spans over 100 years, from the latter part of the 19th century to the present day. Motion pictures developed gradually from a carnival novelty to one of the most important tools ofcommunication and entertainment, and mass media in the 20th century and into the 21st century. Most films before 1930 were silent. Motion picture films have substantially affected the arts, technology, andpolitics.[citation
needed]

The cinema was invented during the 1890s, during the industrial revolution. It was considered a cheaper, simpler way to provide entertainment to the masses. Movies would become the most popular visual art form of the late Victorian age. It was simpler because of the fact that before the cinema people would have to travel long distances to see major dioramas or amusement parks. With the advent of the cinema this changed. During the first decade of the cinema's existence, inventors worked to improve the machines for making and showing films. The cinema is a complicated medium, and before it could be invented, several technological requirements had to be met.[2]
Contents
[hide]

1 The beginning of cinema

1.1 Precursors of film

2 The silent era

o o

2.1 Film history from 1895 to 1906 2.2 Film history from 1906 to 1914

o o

2.3 Film history from 1914 to 1919 2.4 Hollywood triumphant

3 The sound era

o o o o o o o o o o

3.1 Industry impact of sound 3.2 Creative impact of sound 3.3 The 1940s: the war and post-war years 3.4 The 1950s 3.5 1960s 3.6 1970s: The 'New Hollywood' or Post-classical cinema 3.7 1980s: sequels, blockbusters and videotape 3.8 1990s: New special effects, independent films, and DVDs 3.9 2000s 3.10 2010s

4 The underground 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit]The

beginning of cinema
of film

[edit]Precursors

Main article: Precursors of film Theatre and dance are ancient predecessors of film and include many common elements: scripts, sets,lighting, costumes, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, choreography, and scores. Consequently, film and theatre share much terminology. One of the first technological precursors of film is the pinhole camera, followed by the more advancedcamera obscura, which was first described in detail by Alhazen in his Book of Optics (1021),[3][4][5] and later perfected by Giambattista della Porta. Light is inverted through a small hole or lens from outside, and projected onto a surface or screen. Using camera obscura, it is possible to create a projected moving image, but, in the absence of recording technology, only in real-time. In 1739 and 1748, David Hume published A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, arguing for the associations and causes of ideas with visual images, in some sense forerunners to the language of film.

Moving images were produced on revolving drums and disks in the 1830s with independent invention by Simon von Stampfer (Stroboscope) in Austria, Joseph Plateau (Phenakistoscope) in Belgium and William Horner (zoetrope) in Britain. On June 19, 1872, under the sponsorship of Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse named "Sallie Gardner" in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras. The experiment took place on June 11 at the Palo Alto farm in California with the press present. The exercise was meant to determine whether a running horse ever had all four legs lifted off the ground at once. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse's, and each camera shutter was controlled by a trip wire which was triggered by the horse's hooves. They were 21 inches apart to cover the 20 feet taken by the horse stride, taking pictures at one thousandth of a second.[6] tienne-Jules Marey invented a chronophotographic gun in 1882, which was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, recording all the frames on the same picture. He used the chronophotographic gun for studying animals and human locomotion.

Roundhay Garden Scene 1888, the first known celluloid film recorded.

The second experimental film, Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed by Louis Le Prince on October 14, 1888 in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK is now known as the earliest surviving motion picture. On June 21, 1889, William Friese-Greene was issued patent no. 10131 for his 'chronophotographic' camera. It was apparently capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using perforated celluloid film. A report on the camera was published in the BritishPhotographic News on February 28, 1890. On 18 March, Friese-Greene sent a clipping of the story to Thomas Edison, whose laboratory had been developing a motion picture system known as theKinetoscope. The report was reprinted in Scientific American on April 19.[7] Friese-Greene gave a public demonstration in 1890 but the low frame rate combined with the device's apparent unreliability failed to make an impression. As a result of the work of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, many researchers in the late 19th century realized that films as they are known today were a practical possibility, but the first to design a fully

successful apparatus was W. K. L. Dickson, working under the direction of Thomas Alva Edison. His fully developed camera, called the Kinetograph, was patented in 1891 and took a series of instantaneous photographs on standard Eastman Kodak photographic emulsion coated on to a transparent celluloid strip 35 mm wide. The results of this work were first shown in public in 1893, using the viewing apparatus also designed by Dickson, and called the Kinetoscope. This was contained within a large box, and only permitted the images to be viewed by one person at a time looking into it through a peephole, after starting the machine by inserting a coin. It was not a commercial success in this form, and left the way free for Charles Francis Jenkins and his projector, the Phantoscope, with the first showing before an audience in June 1894. Louis and Auguste Lumire perfected the Cinmatographe, an apparatus that took, printed, and projected film. They gave their first show of projected pictures to an audience in Paris in December 1895. [1] After this date, the Edison company developed its own form of projector, as did various other inventors. Some of these used different film widths and projection speeds, but after a few years the 35-mm wide Edison film, and the 16-frames-per-second projection speed of the Lumire Cinmatographe became standard. The other important American competitor was the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, which used a new camera designed by Dickson after he left the Edison company.[1] At the Chicago 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Muybridge gave a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall, built specially for that purpose in the "Midway Plaisance" arm of the exposition. He used his zoopraxiscope to show his moving pictures to a paying public, making the Hall the first commercial film theater.[6] William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, chief engineer with the Edison Laboratories, is credited with the invention of a practicable form of a celluloid strip containing a sequence of images, the basis of a method of photographing and projecting moving images.[citation needed] Celluloid blocks were thinly sliced, then removed with heated pressure plates. After this, they were coated with a photosensitive gelatin emulsion. [citation needed] In 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair, Thomas Edison introduced to the public two pioneering inventions based on this innovation; the Kinetograph - the first practical moving picture camera - and the Kinetoscope. The latter was a cabinet in which a continuous loop of Dickson's celluloid film (powered by an electric motor) was back lit by an incandescent lamp and seen through a magnifying lens. The spectator viewed the image through an eye piece. Kinetoscope parlours were supplied with fifty-foot film snippets photographed by Dickson, in Edison's "Black Maria" studio (pronounced like "ma-RYE-ah"). These sequences recorded both mundane incidents, such as Fred Ott's Sneeze, and entertainment acts, such as acrobats, music hall performers and boxing demonstrations. Kinetoscope parlors soon spread successfully to Europe. Edison, however, never attempted to patent these instruments on the other side of the Atlantic, since they relied so greatly on previous experiments and

innovations from Britain and Europe. This enabled the development of imitations, such as the camera devised by British electrician and scientific instrument maker Robert W. Paul and his partner Birt Acres. In 1887 Ottomar Anschtz, wanting to display moving pictures to large groups of people, presented his Electrotachyscope that used 24 images on a rotating glass disk.[8] In 1894 his invention projected moving images[9] in Berlin. At about the same time, in Lyon, France,Auguste and Louis Lumire invented the cinematograph, a portable camera, printer, and projector. In late 1895 in Paris, father Antoine Lumire began exhibitions of projected films before the paying public, beginning the general conversion of the medium to projection (Cook, 1990). They quickly became Europe's main producers with their actualits like Workers Leaving the Lumire Factory and comic vignettes likeThe Sprinkler Sprinkled (both 1895). Even Edison, initially dismissive of projection, joined the trend with the Vitascope, a modified Jenkins' Phantoscope, within less than six months. The first public motion-picture film presentation in the world, though, belongs to Max and Emil Skladanowsky of Berlin, who projected with their apparatus "Bioscop", a flickerfree duplex construction, November 1 through 31, 1895. That same year in May, in the USA, Eugene Augustin Lauste devised his Eidoloscope for the Latham family. But the first public screening of film ever is due to Jean Aim "Acme" Le Roy, a French photographer. On February 5, 1894, his 40th birthday, he presented his "Marvellous Cinematograph" to a group of around twenty show business men in New York City. The films of the time were seen mostly via temporary storefront spaces and traveling exhibitors or as acts in vaudeville programs. A film could be under a minute long and would usually present a single scene, authentic or staged, of everyday life, a public event, a sporting event orslapstick. There was little to no cinematic technique: no editing and usually no camera movement, and flat, stagey compositions. But the novelty of realistically moving photographs was enough for a motion picture industry to mushroom before the end of the century, in countries around the world. "The Cinema was to offer a cheaper, simpler way of providing entertainment to the masses. Filmmakers could record actors' performances, which then could be shown to audiences around the world. Travelogues would bring the sights of far-flung places, with movement , directly to spectators' hometowns. Movies would become the most popular visual art form of the late late Victorian age"[10]

[edit]The

silent era

A scene from "A trip to the moon" (1902) by Georges Mlis.

In the silent era of film, marrying the image with synchronous sound was not possible for inventors and producers, since no practical method was devised until 1923. Thus, for the first thirty years of their history, films were silent, although accompanied by live musicians and sometimes sound effects and even commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist. Illustrated songs were a notable exception to this trend that began in 1894 in vaudeville houses and persisted as late as the late 1930s in film theaters.[11] In this early precursor to the music video, live performance or sound recordings were paired with hand-colored glass slides projected through stereopticons and similar devices. In this way, song narrative was illustrated through a series of slides whose changes were simultaneous with the narrative development. The main purpose of illustrated songs was to encourage sheet music sales, and they were highly successful with sales reaching into the millions for a single song. Later, with the birth of film, illustrated songs were used as filler material preceding films and during reel changes.[12] In most countries the need for spoken accompaniment quickly faded, with dialogue and narration presented in intertitles, but in Japanese cinema it remained popular throughout the silent era.

[edit]Film

history from 1895 to 1906

The first eleven years of motion pictures show the cinema moving from a novelty to an established large-scale entertainment industry. The films represent a movement from films consisting of one shot, completely made by one person with a few assistants, towards films several minutes long consisting of several shots, which were made by large companies in something like industrial conditions.

[edit]Film business up to 1906

The first commercial exhibition of film took place on April 14, 1894 at the first Kinetoscope parlor ever built. However, it was clear that Edison originally intended to create a sound film system, which would not gain worldwide recognition until the release of "The Jazz Singer" in 1927. In 1896 it became clear that more money

was to be made by showing motion picture films with a projector to a large audience than exhibiting them in Edison's Kinetoscope peep-show machines. The Edison company took up a projector developed by Armat and Jenkins, the Phantoscope, which was renamed the Vitascope, and it joined various projecting machines made by other people to show the 480 mm. width films being made by the Edison company and others in France and the UK. However, the most successful motion picture company in the United States, with the largest production until 1900, was the American Mutoscope company. This was initially set up to exploit peep-show type films using designs made by W.K.L. Dickson after he left the Edison company in 1895. His equipment used 70 mm. wide film, and each frame was printed separately onto paper sheets for insertion into their viewing machine, called the Mutoscope. The image sheets stood out from the periphery of a rotating drum, and flipped into view in succession. Besides the Mutoscope, they also made a projector called the Biograph, which could project a continuous positive film print made from the same negatives. There were numerous other smaller producers in the United States, and some of them established a long-term presence in the new century.American Vitagraph, one of these minor producers, built studios in Brooklyn, and expanded its operations in 1905. From 1896 there was continuous litigation in the United States over the patents covering the basic mechanisms that made motion pictures possible. In France, the Lumire company sent cameramen all round the world from 1896 onwards to shoot films, which were exhibited locally by the cameramen, and then sent back to the company factory in Lyon to make prints for sale to whoever wanted them. There were nearly a thousand of these films made up to 1901, nearly all of them actualities. By 1898 Georges Mlis was the largest producer of fiction films in France, and from this point onwards his output was almost entirely films featuring trick effects, which were very successful in all markets. The special popularity of his longer films, which were several minutes long from 1899 onwards (while most other films were still only a minute long), led other makers to start producing longer films. 1900 Charles Path began film production under the Path-Frres brand, with Ferdinand Zecca hired to actually make the films. By 1905, Path was the largest film company in the world, a position it retained until World War I. Lon Gaumont began film production in 1896, with his production supervised by Alice Guy. In the UK, Robert W. Paul, James Williamson and G.A. Smith and the other lesser producers were joined by Cecil Hepworth in 1899, and in a few years he was turning out 100 films a year, with his company becoming the largest on the British scene.

[edit]Film exhibition
Initially films were mostly shown as a novelty in special venues, but the main methods of exhibition quickly became either as an item on the programmes of variety theatres, or by traveling showman in tent theatres,

which they took around the fairs in country towns. It became the practice for the producing companies to sell prints outright to the exhibitors, at so much per foot, regardless of the subject. Typical prices initially were 15 cents a foot in the United States, and one shilling a foot in Britain. Hand-coloured films, which were being produced of the most popular subjects before 1900, cost 2 to 3 times as much per foot. There were a few producers, such as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, which did not sell their films, but exploited them solely with their own exhibition units. The first successful permanent theatre showing nothing but films was The Nickelodeon, which was opened in Pittsburgh in 1905. By this date there were finally enough films several minutes long available to fill a programme running for at least half an hour, and which could be changed weekly when the local audience became bored with it. Other exhibitors in the United States quickly followed suit, and within a couple of years there were thousands of these nickelodeons in operation. The American situation led to a worldwide boom in the production and exhibition of films from 1906 onwards.

[edit]Film technique

Georges Mlis (left) painting a backdrop in his studio

The first film cameras were fastened directly to the head of their tripod or other support, with only the crudest kind of levelling devices provided, in the manner of the still-camera tripod heads of the period. The earliest film cameras were thus effectively fixed during the shot, and hence the first camera movements were the result of mounting a camera on a moving vehicle. The first known of these was a film shot by a Lumire cameraman from the back platform of a train leaving Jerusalem in 1896, and by 1898 there were a number of films shot from moving trains. Although listed under the general heading of "panoramas" in the sales catalogues of the time, those films shot straight forward from in front of a railway engine were usually specifically referred to as "phantom rides". In 1897, Robert W. Paul had the first real rotating camera head made to put on a tripod, so that he could follow the passing processions of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in one uninterrupted shot. This device had the camera mounted on a vertical axis that could be rotated by a worm gear driven by turning a crank handle, and

Paul put it on general sale the next year. Shots taken using such a "panning" head were also referred to as "panoramas" in the film catalogues of the first decade of the cinema. The standard pattern for early film studios was provided by the studio which Georges Mlis had built in 1897. This had a glass roof and three glass walls constructed after the model of large studios for still photography, and it was fitted with thin cotton cloths that could be stretched below the roof to diffuse the direct ray of the sun on sunny days. The soft overall light without real shadows that this arrangement produced, and which also exists naturally on lightly overcast days, was to become the basis for film lighting in film studios for the next decade.

[edit]Filmic effects
Unique among all the one minute long films made by the Edison company, which recorded parts of the acts of variety performers for their Kinetoscope viewing machines, was The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. This showed a person dressed as the queen placing her head on the execution block in front of a small group of bystanders in Elizabethan dress. The executioner brings his axe down, and the queen's severed head drops onto the ground. This trick was worked by stopping the camera and replacing the actor with a dummy, then restarting the camera before the axe falls. The two pieces of film were then trimmed and cemented together so that the action appeared continuous when the film was shown. This film was among those exported to Europe with the first Kinetoscope machines in 1895, and was seen by Georges Mlis, who was putting on magic shows in his Theatre Robert-Houdin in Paris at the time. He took up filmmaking in 1896, and after making imitations of other films from Edison, Lumire, and Robert Paul, he made Escamotage dun dame chez Robert-Houdin (The Vanishing Lady). This film shows a woman being made to vanish by using the same stop motion technique as the earlier Edison film. After this, Georges Mlis made many single shot films using this trick over the next couple of years. The other basic set of techniques for trick cinematography involves double exposure of the film in the camera, which was first done by G.A. Smith in July 1898 in the UK. His The Corsican Brothers was described in the catalogue of the Warwick Trading Company, which took up the distribution of Smith's films in 1900, thus:

A scene inset inside a circular vignette showing a dream vision in Santa Claus (1899)

One of the twin brothers returns home from shooting in the Corsican mountains, and is visited by the ghost of the other twin. By extremely careful photography the ghost appears *quite transparent*. After indicating that he has been killed by a sword-thrust, and appealing for vengeance, he disappears. A vision then appears showing the fatal duel in the snow. To the Corsican's amazement, the duel and death of his brother are vividly depicted in the vision, and finally, overcome by his feelings, he falls to the floor just as his mother enters the room. The ghost effect was simply done by draping the set in black velvet after the main action had been shot, and then re-exposing the negative with the actor playing the ghost going through the actions at the appropriate point. Likewise, the vision, which appeared within a circular vignette or matte, was similarly superimposed over a black area in the backdrop to the scene, rather than over a part of the set with detail in it, so that nothing appeared through the image, which seemed quite solid. Smith used this technique again a year later in Santa Claus. Georges Mlis first used superimposition on a dark background in la Caverne maudite (The Cave of the Demons) made a couple of months later in 1898, and then elaborated it further with multiple superimpositions in the one shot in lHomme de ttes (The Troublesome Heads). He then did it with further variations in numerous subsequent films.

[edit]Other special techniques

The other special effect technique that G.A. Smith initiated was reverse motion and the quality of selfmotivating images. He did this by repeating the action a second time, while filming it with an inverted camera, and then joining the tail of the second negative to that of the first. The first films made using this device were Tipsy, Topsy, Turvy and The Awkward Sign Painter. The Awkward Sign Painter showed a sign painter lettering a sign, and in the reverse printing of the same footage appended to the standard print, the painting on

the sign vanished under the painter's brush. The earliest surviving example of this technique is Smith's The House That Jack Built, made before September 1901. Here, a small boy is shown knocking down a castle just constructed by a little girl out of children's building blocks. Then a title appears, saying Reversed, and the action is repeated in reverse, so that the castle re-erects itself under his blows. Cecil Hepworth took this technique further, by printing the negative of the forwards motion backwards frame by frame, so producing a print in which the original action was exactly reversed. To do this he built a special printer in which the negative running through a projector was projected into the gate of a camera through a special lens giving a same-size image. This arrangement came to be called a projection printer, and eventually an optical printer. With it Hepworth made The Bathers in 1900, in which bathers who have undressed and jumped into the water appear to spring backwards out of it, and have their clothes magically fly back onto their bodies. The use of different camera speeds also appeared around 1900. To make Robert Paul's On a Runaway Motor Car through Piccadilly Circus(1899), the camera was turned very slowly, so that when the film was projected at the usual 16 frames per second, the scenery appeared to be passing at great speed. Cecil Hepworth used the opposite effect in The Indian Chief and the Seidlitz Powder (1901), in which a nave Red Indian eats a lot of the fizzy stomach medicine, causing his stomach to expand vastly. He leaps around in a way that is made balloonlike by cranking the camera much faster than 16 frames per second. This gives what we would call a slow motion effect.

[edit]Animation
The most important development in this area of special techniques occurred, arguably, in 1899, with the production of the short film Matches: An Appeal, a thirty-second long stop-motion animated piece intended to encourage the audience to send matches to British troops fighting the Boer War. The relative sophistication of this piece was not followed up for some time, with subsequent works in animation being limited to short, two or three frame effects, such as appeared in Edwin Porter's 1902 short "Fun in a Bakery Shop", where a lump of dough was made to smile over the course of a three-frame sequence. Works rivaling the British short in length did not appear until 1905, when Edwin Porter made How Jones Lost His Roll, and The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog. Both of these films had intertitles which were formed by the letters moving into place from a random scattering to form the words of the titles. This was done by exposing the film one frame at a time, and moving the letters a little bit towards their final position between each exposure. This is what has come to be called single frameanimation or object animation, and it needs a slightly adapted camera that exposes only one frame for each turn of the crank handle, rather than the usual eight frames per turn. In 1906, Albert Edward Smith and James Stuart Blackton at Vitagraph took the next step, and in their Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, what appear to be cartoon drawings of people move from one pose to another. This is done for most of the length of this film by moving jointed cut-outs of the figures frame by frame

between the exposures, just as Porter moved his letters. However, there is a very short section of the film where things are made to appear to move by altering the drawings themselves from frame to frame, which is how standard animated cartoons have since been made up to today.

[edit]Narrative film construction

The way forward to making films made up of more than one shot was led by films of the life of Jesus Christ. The first of these was made in France in 1897, and it was followed in the same year by a film of the Passion play staged yearly in the Czech town of Horitz. This was filmed by Americans for exhibition outside the German-speaking world and was presented in special venues, not as a continuous film, but with the separate scenes interspersed with lantern slides, a lecture, and live choral numbers, to increase the running time of the spectacle to about 90 minutes. Films of acted reproductions of scenes from the Greco-Turkish war were made by Georges Mlis in 1897, and although sold separately, these were no doubt shown in continuous sequence by exhibitors. In 1898 a few films of similar kind were made, but still none had continuous action moving from one shot into the next. The multishot films that Georges Mlis made in 1899 were much longer than those made by anybody else, but lAffaire Dreyfus (The Dreyfus Case) and Cendrillon (Cinderella) still contained no action moving from one shot to the next one. Also, from Cendrillon onwards, Mlis made a dissolve between every shot in his films, which reduced any appearance of action continuity even further. To understand what is going on in both these films, the audience had to know their stories beforehand, or be told them by a presenter.

[edit]Film continuity
Real film continuity, which means showing action moving from one shot into another joined to it, can be dated to Robert W. Paul's Come Along, Do!, made in 1898. In the first shot of this film, an old couple outside an art exhibition follow other people inside through the door. The second shot showed what they do inside.

The two scenes making up Come Along, Do!

The further development of action continuity in multi-shot films continued in 1899. In the latter part of that year, George Albert Smith, working in Brighton, made The Kiss in the Tunnel. This started with a shot from a phantom ride at the point at which the train goes into a tunnel, and continued with the action on a set representing the interior of a railway carriage, where a man steals a kiss from a woman, and then cuts back to the phantom ride shot when the train comes out of the tunnel. A month later, the Bamforth company in Yorkshire made a restaged version of this film under the same title, and in this case they filmed shots of a train entering and leaving a tunnel from beside the tracks, which they joined before and after their version of the kiss inside the train compartment. In 1900, continuity of action across successive shots was definitively established by George Albert Smith and James Williamson, who also worked in Brighton. In that year Smith made Seen Through the Telescope, in which the main shot shows street scene with a young man tying the shoelace and then caressing the foot of his girlfriend, while an old man observes this through a telescope. There is then a cut to close shot of the hands on the girl's foot shown inside a black circular mask, and then a cut back to the continuation of the original scene.

The first two shots of Seen Through the Telescope (1900), with the telescope POV simulated by the circular mask.

Even more remarkable is James Williamson's Attack on a China Mission Station, made around the same time in 1900. The first shot shows the gate to the mission station from the outside being attacked and broken open by Chinese Boxer rebels, then there is a cut to the garden of the mission station where the missionary and his family are seated. The Boxers rush in and after exchanging fire with the missionary, kill him, and pursue his family into the house. His wife appears on the balcony waving for help, which immediately comes with an armed party of British sailors appearing through the gate to the mission station, this time seen from the inside. They fire at the Boxers, and advance out of the frame into the next shot, which is taken from the opposite direction looking towards the house. This constitutes the first reverse angle cut in film history. The scene continues with the sailors rescuing the remaining members of the missionary's family.

G.A. Smith further developed the ideas of breaking a scene shot in one place into a series of shots taken from different camera positions over the next couple of years, starting with The Little Doctors of 1901. In this film a little girl is administering pretend medicine to a kitten, and Smith cuts in to a big Close Up of the kitten as she does so, and then cuts back to the main shot. In this case the inserted close up is not shown as a Point of View shot in a circular mask. He summed up his work in Mary Jane's Mishap of 1903, with repeated cuts in to a close shot of a housemaid fooling around, along with superimpositions and other devices, before abandoning film-making to invent the Kinemacolor system of colour cinematography. James Williamson concentrated on making films taking action from one place shown in one shot to the next shown in another shot in films like Stop Thief! and Fire!, made in 1901, and many others.

[edit]Film continuity developed

Other film-makers then took up all these ideas, which is the basis of film construction, or film language, or film grammar, as we know it. The best known of these film-makers was Edwin S. Porter, who started making films for the Edison Company in 1901. When he began making longer films in 1902, he put a dissolve between every shot, just as Georges Mlis was already doing, and he frequently had the same action repeated across the dissolves. In other words, Edwin Porter did not develop the basics of film construction. The Path company in France also made imitations and variations of Smith and Williamson's films from 1902 onwards using cuts between the shots, which helped to standardize the basics of film construction. In 1903 there was a substantial increase in the number of women film several minutes long [meaning unclear], as a result of the great popularity of Georges Mlis le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), which came out in early 1902, though such films were still a very minor part of production. Most of them were what came to be called chase films. These were inspired by James Williamson's Stop Thief! of 1901, which showed a tramp stealing a leg of mutton from a butcher's boy in the first shot, then being chased through the second shot by the butcher's boy and assorted dogs, and finally being caught by the dogs in the third shot. Several British films made in the first half of 1903 extended the chase method of film construction. These included An Elopement la Modeand The Pickpocket: A Chase Through London, made by Alf Collins for the British branch of the French Gaumont company, Daring Daylight Burglary, made by Frank Mottershaw at the Sheffield Photographic Company, and Desperate Poaching Affray, made by the Haggar family, whose main business was exhibiting films made by others in their traveling tent theatre. All of these films, and indeed others of like nature were shown in the United States, and some them were certainly seen by Edwin Porter, before he made The Great Train Robbery towards the end of the year. The time continuity in The Great Train Robbery is actually more confusing than that in the films it was modeled on, but nevertheless it was a greater success than them worldwide, because of its Wild West violence.

From 1900, the Path company films also frequently copied and varied the ideas of the British film-makers, without making any major innovations in narrative film construction, but eventually the sheer volume of their production led to their film-makers giving a further precision and polish to the details of film continuity.

[edit]Film

history from 1906 to 1914

Poster for a Biograph Studios release from 1913.

[edit]The film business

In 1907 there were about 4,000 small nickelodeon cinemas in the United States. The films were shown with the accompaniment of music provided by a pianist, though there could be more musicians. There were also a very few larger cinemas in some of the biggest cities. Initially, the majority of films in the programmes were Path films, but this changed fairly quickly as the American companies cranked up production. The programme was made up of just a few films, and the show lasted around 30 minutes. The reel of film, of maximum length 1,000 feet (300 m), which usually contained one individual film, became the standard unit of film production and exhibition in this period. The programme was changed twice or more a week, but went up to five changes of programme a week after a couple of years. In general, cinemas were set up in the established entertainment districts of the cities. In other countries of the Western world the film exhibition situation was similar. With the change to nickelodeon exhibition there was also a change, led by Path in 1907, from selling films outright to renting them through film exchanges.

An early film, depicting a re-enactment of the Battle of Chemulpo Bay (Film produced in 1904 by Edison Studios)

The litigation over patents between all the major American film-making companies had continued, and at the end of 1908 they decided to pool their patents and form a trust to use them to control the American film business. The companies concerned were Path,Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Lubin, Selig, Essanay,Kalem, and the Kleine Optical Company, a major importer of European films. The George Eastman company, the only manufacturer of film stock in the United States, was also part of the combine, which was called the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), and Eastman Kodak agreed to only supply the members with film stock. License fees for distributing and projecting films were extracted from all distributors and exhibitors. The producing companies that were part of the trust were allocated production quotas (two reels, i.e. films, a week for the biggest ones, one reel a week for the smaller), which were supposed to be enough to fill the programmes of the licensed exhibitors. Vitagraph and Edison already had multiple production units, and so had no difficulty meeting their quota, but in 1908 Biograph lost their one working director. They offered the job of making their films to D. W. Griffith, an unimportant actor and playwright, who took up the job, and found he had a gift for it. Alone he made all the Biograph films from 1908 to 1910. This amounted to 30 minutes of screen time a week. But the market was bigger than the Motion Picture Patents Company members could supply. Although 6,000 exhibitors signed with the MPPC, about 2,000 others did not. A minority of the exchanges (i.e. distributors) stayed outside the MPPC, and in 1909 these independent exchanges immediately began to fund new film producing companies. By 1911 there were enough independent and foreign films available to programme all the shows of the independent exhibitors, and in 1912 the independents had nearly half of the market. The MPPC had effectively been defeated in its plan to control the whole United States market, and the government anti-trust action, which only now started against the MPPC, was not really necessary to defeat it.

[edit]Multi-reel films
It was around 1910 that the actors in American films, who up to this point had been anonymous, began to receive screen credit, and the way to the creation of film stars was opened. The appearance of films longer

than one reel also helped this process. Such films were extremely rare, and almost entirely restricted to film versions of the life of Christ, which had reached three reels in length in the first few years of cinema. They were always shown as a special event in special venues, and supported by live commentary and music. A unique addition to this style of presentation was The Story of the Kelly Gang, made in Australia in 1906. This was a four-reel version of the career of this famous (in Australia) outlaw, and was incomprehensible without explanation. More multi-reel films were made in Europe than in the United States after 1906, because the MPPC insisted on working on the basis of one-reel films up until 1912. However, before this, some MPPC members got around this restriction by occasionally making longer stories in separate parts, and releasing them in successive weeks, starting with Vitagraph's The Life of Moses in five parts (and five reels) at the end 1909. In other countries this film was shown straight through as one picture, and it inspired the creation of other multi-reel films in Europe. Path-Frres set up a new subsidiary company in the United States called Eclectic in 1913, and in 1914 this began production of features at the Path plant in New Jersey. The French clair company was already making films in the United States, and their production of features increased with the transfer of more filmmakers when the French industry was shut down at the beginning of World War I. Up to 1913, most American film production was still carried out around New York, but because of the monopoly of Thomas Edison's film patents, many filmmakers had moved to Southern California, hoping to escape the litany of lawsuits that the Edison Company had been bringing to protect its monopoly. Once there in Southern California, the film industry grew continuously. The move to filming in California had begun when Selig, one of the MPPC companies, sent a production unit there in 1909. Other companies, both independents and members of the MPPC, then sent units to work there in the summer to take advantage of the sunshine and scenery. The latter was important for the production of Westerns, which now formed a major American film genre. The first cowboy star was G.M. Anderson (Broncho Billy), directing his own Western dramas for Essanay, but in 1911 Tom Mix brought the kind of costumes and stunt action used in live Wild West shows to Selig film productions, and became the biggest cowboy star for the next two decades. Most of the major companies made films in all the genres, but some had a special interest in certain kinds of films. Once Selig had taken up production in California, they used the (fairly) wild animals from the zoo that Colonel Selig had set up there in a series of exotic adventures, with the actors being menaced or saved by the animals. Essanay specialized in Westerns featuring Broncho Billy Anderson, and Kalem sent Sidney Olcott off with a film crew and a troupe of actors to various places in America and abroad to make film stories in the actual places they were supposed to have happened. Kalem also pioneered the female action heroine from 1912, with Ruth Roland playing starring roles in their Westerns.

Minor curiosities were some of the films of Solax directed by Herbert Blach and his wife Alice Guy. They left American branch of the Gaumont company in 1912 to set up their own independent company. The distinguishing feature of some of their films was a deliberate attempt to use resolutely theatrical-type light comedy playing that was directed towards the audience. This went against the trend towards filmic restraint already visible in what were called polite comedies from other film companies. In France, Path retained its dominant position, followed still by Gaumont, and then other new companies that appeared to cater to the film boom. A film company with a different approach was Film dArt. This was set up at the beginning of 1908 to make films of a serious artistic nature. Their declared programme was to make films using only the best dramatists, artists and actors. The first of these was LAssassinat du Duc de Guise (The Assassination of the Duc de Guise), a historical subject set in the court of Henri III. This film used leading actors from the Comdie Francaise, and had a special accompanying score written by Camille Saint-Saens. The other French majors followed suit, and this wave gave rise to the English-language description of films with artistic pretensions aimed at a sophisticated audience as art films. By 1910, the French film companies were starting to make films as long as two, or even three reels, though most were still one reel long. This trend was followed in Italy, Denmark, and Sweden. Although the British industry continued to expand after its brilliant beginning, the new companies that replaced the first innovative film-makers proved unable to preserve their drive and originality.

[edit]New film producing countries

With the worldwide film boom, yet more countries now joined Britain, France, and the United States in serious film production. In Italy, production was spread over several centres, with Turin being the first and biggest. There, Ambrosio was the first company in the field in 1905, and remained the largest in the country through this period. Its most substantial rival was Cines in Rome, which started producing in 1906. The great strength of the Italian industry was historical epics, with large casts and massive scenery. As early as 1911, Giovanni Pastrone'stwo-reel la Caduta di Troia (The Fall of Troy) made a big impression worldwide, and it was followed by even bigger spectacles like Quo Vadis? (1912), which ran for 90 minutes, and Pastrone's Cabiria of 1914, which ran for two and a half hours.

La Caduta di Troia (The Siege of Troy) (1911)

Italian companies also had a strong line in slapstick comedy, with actors like Andr Deed, known locally as Cretinetti, and elsewhere as Foolshead and Gribouille, achieving worldwide fame with his almost surrealistic gags. The most important film-producing country in Northern Europe up until the First World War was Denmark. The Nordisk company was set up there in 1906 by Ole Olsen, a fairground showman, and after a brief period imitating the successes of French and British film-makers, in 1907 he produced 67 films, most directed by Viggo Larsen, with sensational subjects like Den hvide Slavinde (The White Slave),Isbjrnenjagt (Polar Bear Hunt) and Lvejagten (The Lion Hunt). By 1910 new smaller Danish companies began joining the business, and besides making more films about the white slave trade, they contributed other new subjects. The most important of these finds was Asta Nielsen in Afgrunden (The Abyss), directed byUrban Gad for Kosmorama, This combined the circus, sex, jealousy and murder, all put over with great conviction, and pushed the other Danish film-makers further in this direction. By 1912 the Danish film companies were multiplying rapidly. The Swedish film industry was smaller and slower to get started than the Danish industry. Here, the important man was Charles Magnusson, a newsreel cameraman for the Svenskabiografteatern cinema chain. He started fiction film production for them in 1909, directing a number of the films himself. Production increased in 1912, when the company engaged Victor Sjstrm and Mauritz Stiller as directors. They started out by imitating the subjects favoured by the Danish film industry, but by 1913 they were producing their own strikingly original work, which sold very well. Russia began its film industry in 1908 with Path shooting some fiction subjects there, and then the creation of real Russian film companies by Aleksandr Drankov and Aleksandr Khanzhonkov. The Khanzhonkov company quickly became much the largest Russian film company, and remained so until 1918. In Germany, Oskar Messter had been involved in film-making from 1896, but did not make a significant number of films per year till 1910. When the worldwide film boom started, he, and the few other people in the German

film business, continued to sell prints of their own films outright, which put them at a disadvantage. It was only when Paul Davidson, the owner of a chain of cinemas, brought Asta Nielsen and Urban Gad to Germany from Denmark in 1911, and set up a production company, Projektions-AG Union (PAGU), for them, that a changeover to renting prints began. Messter replied with a series of longer films starring Henny Porten, but although these did well in the German-speaking world, they were not particularly successful internationally, unlike the Asta Nielsen films. Another of the growing German film producers just before World War I was the German branch of the French clair company, Deutsche clair. This was expropriated by the German government, and turned into DECLA when the war started. But altogether, German producers only had a minor part of the German market in 1914. Overall, from about 1910, American films had the largest share of the market in all European countries except France, and even in France, the American films had just pushed the local production out of first place on the eve of World War I. So even if the war had not happened, American films may have become dominant worldwide. Although the war made things much worse for European producers, the technical qualities of American films made them increasingly attractive to audiences everywhere.

[edit]Film technique

A.E. Smith filming The Bargain Fiend in the Vitagraph Studios in 1907. Arc floodlights hang overhead.

With the increased production required by the nickelodeon boom, extra artificial lighting was used more and more in the film studios to supplement diffuse sunlight, and so increase the hours that film could be shot during the day. The main sources used were modified arc lights made for street lighting. These were either hung on battens suspended forward of the actors from the roof, or mounted in groups on floorstands. The addition of a metal reflector round the arc source directed a very broad sweep of light in the desired direction. Large mercury vapour tube lights (Cooper-Hewitts) were also used in racks placed in the same way. Arc lights had been used to produce special lighting effects in films like the light from a lamp or firelight before 1906, but this now became more common. File:vitlkW1.gif|thumb|Low key lighting for sinister effect in The Mystery of Temple Court A strong expressive use of a fire effect occurs in D.W. Griffith's A Drunkard's Reformation (1909). Here, the reformed drunkard is

happily reunited with his family before the fire in the hearth, in a set-up reproducing that at the beginning of the film in which the fire is out, and the hearth is cold, and the family is destitute. Low-key lighting (i.e. lighting in which most of the frame is dark) slowly began to be used for sinister scenes, but not in D.W. Griffith films. Vitagraph's thriller, The Mystery of Temple Court (1910) has low-key lighting for a scene of murder, and their Conscience (1912) shows low-key lighting done solely with artificial light for a scene of terror.

Nero lit by arc floodlights from below inQuo Vadis?

This sort of lighting was appearing occasionally in European films by 1911, and in some cases was pushed much further. Lighting from a low angle was used more strongly in the Italian epic filmQuo Vadis? in 1912, and then in the famous Cabiria (1914) to reinforce the weird atmosphere in one scene. Silhouette effects in location scenes began to appear in 1909 in both the United States and Italy; though as things developed, European film-makers made more use of this than the Americans did. The most important aspect of this was that such shots involved having the sun light the scene from behind, and this approach was extended by using the reflected sunlight from a white surface below the camera to light up the shadow on the actors faces from the front. This is the one novel technique that D.W. Griffith and his cameraman Billy Bitzer may really have invented. The next step was to transfer this kind of back-lighting onto the lighting of actors on studio sets. Up to this point artificial lighting in studio scenes had always been put on from the front or side-front, but in 1912 there began to be a few cases where light was put onto the actors from arc floodlights out of shot behind them and to one side, to give a kind of backlighting. It was not until 1915 that the effect of backlighting of the actors by the sun was fully mimicked in studio lighting, by using a powerful arc spotlight shining from above and behind the set down onto the actors. This slowly became a standard component of the studio lighting of figures in American films, but it took much longer to catch on with European cameramen.

[edit]Animation develops
The technique of single frame animation was further developed in 1907 by Edwin S. Porter in The Teddy Bears and by J. Stuart Blackton withWork Made Easy. In the first of these the toy bears were made to move,

apparently on their own, and in the latter film building tools were made to perform construction tasks without human intervention, by using frame-by-frame animation. The technique got to Europe almost immediately, and Segundo de Chomon and others at Path took it further, adding clay animation, in which sculptures were deformed from one thing into another thing frame by frame in Sculpture moderne (1908), and then Path made the next step to the animation of silhouette shapes. Also in France, Emile Cohl fully developed drawn animation in a series of films starting with Fantasmagorie (1908), in which humans and objects drawn as outline figures went though a series of remarkable interactions and transformations. In the United States the response was from the famous strip cartoon artist Winsor McCay, who drew much more realistic animated figures going through smoother, more naturalistic motion in a series of films starting with the film Little Nemo, made for Vitagraph in 1911. In the next few years various others took part in this development of animated cartoons in the United States and elsewhere.

[edit]Cross-cutting between parallel actions

As the film boom got under way, the Patha film-makers continued to refine the continuity of action from shot to shot in their films. In films like Patha's le Cheval emball (The Runaway Horse) (1907), there appeared a new feature, which can be called cross-cutting between parallel actions. In this film, a delivery man is going about his lady's house inside an apartment house while his horse steals a big meal from a bag of oats outside a feed store. The film cuts back and forwards between the two chains of action four times before the delivery man comes out, and the horse runs away with him. More importantly, early next year the Path production unit down in the south of France in Nice made le Mdecin du chateau (The Physician of the Castle), in which there are cuts back and forth between criminals threatening a doctor's wife and child, while the doctor himself drives home to rescue them after being warned by telephone. This film also contains a cut in to a closer shot of the doctor as he hears the dreadful news on the telephone, which uses the new idea of getting in closer to the actor to accentuate the emotion. In the United States, Vitagraph was also trying cross-cutting for suspense in 1907 and 1908 with The Mill Girl and Get Me a Stepladder. Before D.W. Griffith started directing at Biograph in May 1908, he had seen the two Path films just mentioned, and a number of Vitagraph films as well. But Griffith's first use of cross-cutting in The Fatal Hour, made in July 1908, has a much stronger suspense story served by this construction than those in the earlier Path examples. From this point onwards Griffith certainly developed the device much further, gradually increasing the number of alternations between two, and later three, sets of parallel scenes, and also their speed. This intensified usage was only slowly taken up by other American film-makers. So although he did not invent the technique of cross-cutting, he did consciously develop it into a powerful method of film construction. It is also important to note that Griffith described cross-cutting indiscriminately as the switch-back or cut-back or flash-back technique, and that by the last of these terms he did not mean what we now understand by a flash-back. The true flash-back was also developed in this period, but not at all by D.W. Griffith.

Although D. W. Griffith did not invent any new film techniques, he was the best film director working up to 1913, and this was because he made better dramatic and artistic use of the medium than other directors. One aspect of this was the structure he gave his films, with the final scene mirroring the opening scene, as in the example of A Drunkard's Reformation already mentioned above. Many other examples of this like The Country Doctor (1908) can easily be found in his work. But the most important thing Griffith did was work out significant and expressive natural gestures in intensive rehearsal periods with his actors, before the film was shot, such as the enraged and jealous husband in The Voice of the Child (1911) walking around his office chomping on a cigar and puffing clouds of smoke out of it through clenched teeth. Griffith's increased use of cross-cutting between parallel actions helped him to get more shots into his films than other directors, but he also had another method for doing this. This was to split a scene that could have been played in room (or other place), into two or more sections that moved backwards and forwards between adjoining rooms or spaces. The result of this was that D.W. Griffith's films had at least twice as many shots in them as did those of other American directors. Over this period, the other directors speeded up, but so did Griffith. At first, the technique of cutting in to a closer shot of an actor in a scene made no contribution to the increase in cutting rate, because it was still very rarely done, despite having been established as a possibility in the previous period. The exception to this was a close shot of an object, which was sometimes used to make clear exactly what a person was doing. It was only towards 1913 that film-makers began to cut into closer shots with any regularity. However, American film-makers did get closer to the actors on the average by shooting the whole scene with the camera closer than previously. The Vitagraph company led the way here, by using what they called the nine-foot line from 1910 onwards. This meant that the actors played a scene up to a line marked on the ground nine feet from the camera lens, which meant that they were shown cut off at the waist in the image. Some, but not all, American film-makers followed their example, calling it the American foreground, while European filmmakers stayed with the French foreground established by the Path about 1907, which only cut the actors off at the shins. This corresponded to the actors playing up to a line put down 4 metres in front of the camera lens.

[edit]Point of view shots

An even more important development was the use of the Point of View shot. Previously, these had only been used to convey the idea of what someone in the film was seeing through a telescope (or other aperture), and this was indicated by having a black circular mask or vignette within the film frame. The true Point of View (POV) shot, in which a shot of someone looking at something is followed by a cut to a shot taken from their position without any mask, took longer to appear. In 1910, in Vitagraph's Back to Nature we see a Long Shot of people looking down over the rail of a ship taken from below, followed by a shot of the lifeboat they are looking at taken from their position.

A pair of reverse angles representing the POV of the people on the ship, and what they see in Back to Nature (1910).

However, the Vitagraph film-makers continued to be a little uneasy with the device, as a true POV shot is introduced by an explanatory intertitle, What they saw in the house across the court in Larry Trimble's Jean and the Waif, made at the end of 1910. But a few months later, Trimble made Jean Rescues, another of the popular series starring the fictional exploits of his Border Collie, which has Point of View [POV] shots introduced at an appropriate point without explanation. After this, un-vignetted POV shots began to appear fairly frequently in Vitagraph films, and also occasionally in films from other American companies. However, D.W. Griffith only used them in a theatrical situation, to show what the audience in a theatre were looking at, as did European film-makers.

[edit]Reverse-angle cutting

Close in reverse angle shots of two people in confrontation in The Loafer.

Another important development was in the use of reverse angle shots; that is, continuing a scene with a cut to a shot of the action taken from the opposite direction. There were isolated examples of this very early, and the first of these, Williamson's Attack on a China Mission (1900) has already been mentioned. But in 1908, starting with lAssassinat du duc de Guise (The Assassination of the Duc de Guise), there began to be other films in which a scene was shown from another direction by cutting to the opposite side. This effect was imitated

occasionally in Europe and the United States over the next couple of years, and came to be called a reverse scene. The next step, in which two actors facing each other are shown in successive close shots from taken opposite directions towards each of them, is first to be seen at the end of 1911 in The Loafer, made by Arthur Mackley for Essanay. This is what is called reverse-angle shot|reverse-angle cutting, and it is used constantly in present day film-making. However, it took some years to catch on with other American film-makers, but by 1913, it was starting to occur with greater frequency in the work of a few directors. This happened entirely when they were filming exterior scenes, where there was no problem about shooting past the edge of the studio set. A leading example of this use of close in reverse-angle cutting is His Last Fight (1913), directed by Ralph Ince for Vitagraph, in which one-third of the cuts are between a shot and the reverse angle. However, this sort of thing never happened in D.W. Griffith's films, or in European films.

[edit]Symbolism and insert shots

In this period the word Art was mentioned more and more in connection with motion pictures, and as a result of the increasing artistic ambitions of film-makers, poems began to be transposed directly into films. D.W. Griffith went further than this, by creating the visual equivalent of the poetic or musical refrain in The Way of the World (1910), by cutting in shots of church bells at intervals down the length of the film. However, this was an exceptional case, and it is not until 1912 that there were the first signs of the special expressive use of Insert Shots; that is, shots of objects rather than people. In the Italian Ambrosio companies film La mala planta (The Evil Plant), directed by Mario Caserini, which involves a case of poisoning, there is an Insert shot of a snake slithering over the Evil Plant. Another of the still very rare examples at this date is in Griffith's The Massacre, which was made at the end of 1912. This includes an Insert Shot of a candle at a sick man's bedside guttering out to indicate his death. Yet another is in the Ambrosio company version of Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (The Last Days of Pompeii) (1913). This film includes a scene, preceded by the title The thorns of jealousy, in which a rejected woman overhears the man she loves with another woman, and this is followed by a fade to a shot of a pair of doves, which then dissolves into a shot of a bird of prey. It was in 1914 that D.W. Griffith began to bend the use of the Insert towards truly dramatically expressive ends, but he had not done this often, and it is really only with his The Avenging Conscience of 1914 that a new phase in the use of the Insert Shot starts. In this film the intertitle The birth of the evil thought precedes a series of three shots of the protagonist looking at a spider, and ants eating an insect, though at a later point in the film, when he prepares to kill someone, these shots are cut straight in without explanation. As well as the symbolic inserts already mentioned, The Avenging Conscience also made extensive use of large numbers of Big Close Up shots of clutching hands and tapping feet as a means of emphasizing those parts of the body as indicators of psychological tension. Griffith never went so far in this direction again, but his use of the Insert shot made its real impression on other American film-makers during the years 1915-1919.

[edit]Film art

A scene in les Debuts de Max Linder au cinematographe(1910) showing a Path film crew at work.

The vast increase in film production after 1906 inevitably brought specialist writers into film-making as part of the increasing sub-division of labour, but even so the film companies still had to buy stories from outsiders to get enough material for their productions. This introduced a greater variety into the types of story used in films. The use of more complex stories derived from literary and stage works of the recent past also contributed to developments in script film construction. The general American tendency was to simplify the plots borrowed from novels and plays so that they could be dealt with in one reel and with the minimum of titling and the maximum of straightforward narrative continuity, but there were exceptions to this. In these cases the information that was difficult to film and lacking in strong dramatic interest was put into narrative titles before each scene, and this was also mostly the custom in European films of the more seriously intended kind. Motion pictures were classified into genres by the film industry following the divisions already established in other media, particularly the stage. The main division was into comedy and drama, but these categories were further subdivided. Comedy could be either slapstick (usually referred to as burlesque farce), or alternatively polite comedy, which later came to be referred to as domestic comedy or sophisticated comedy. D.W. Griffith made a small number of the latter type of film in his first two years at Biograph, but had little interest or aptitude for the genre. From 1910 he let Frank Powell, and then Mack Sennett direct the Biograph comedies. Sennett left in 1912 to set up the Keystone company, where he could give his enthusiasm for the slapstick comedy style derived from the earlier Path comedies like le Cheval emball (The Runaway Horse) full rein. In Europe the more restrained type of comedy was developed in substantial quantities in France, with the films of Max Linder for Path representing the summit of the genre from 1910 onwards. Linder's comedy was set in an upper middle-class milieu, and relied on clever and inventive ways of getting around the embarrassments and obstacles arising in his single-minded pursuit of a goal. Quite often a goal of a sexual nature. D.W. Griffith had a major influence on the simplification of film stories. After he had been at Biograph for a year, Griffith started to make some films that had much less story content than any previous one-reel films. In The

Country Doctor, the action is no more than various people, including the doctor, hurrying backwards and forwards between the doctor's house, where his child is sick, and a neighbouring cottage, where another child is also sick. By 1912 and 1913, there are beginning to be many films from many American companies that rely on applying novel decoration to the story, rather than supplying any twists to the drama itself to sustain interest.

[edit]Intertitles
Intertitles containing lines of dialogue began to be used consistently from 1908 onwards. In that year, Vitagraph's An Auto Heroine; or, The Race for the Vitagraph Cup and How It Was Won, contains a couple of dialogue titles, and the same firm's Julius Caesar includes three lines of dialogue from Shakespeare's play quoted in intertitles before the actors speak them, finishing with This was the noblest Roman of them all. From 1909 a small number of American films, and even one or two European ones, came to include a few dialogue titles, or spoken titles as they were called at the time. Film-makers slowly progressed from putting these dialogue titles before the scene in which they were spoken, to cutting them into the middle of the shot at the point at which they were understood to be actually spoken by the characters. This transition began in 1912. Once underway, the trend was aided by the move towards the increasing use of cuts within scenes in American films. In 1913 a substantial proportion of the dialogue titles that were used in American films were cut in at the point when they were spoken. Hardly any of the films where this happened were D.W. Griffith films, and indeed many of his 1913 films still contain no dialogue titles at all. Although some European film-makers picked up the trend towards using dialogue titles, they did not pick up on the move towards cutting them into the scene at the point at which they were actually spoken until a few years later. The introduction of dialogue titles was far from being a trivial matter, for they entirely transformed the nature of film narrative. When dialogue titles came to be always cut into a scene just after a character starts speaking, and then left with a cut to the character just before they finish speaking, then one had something that was effectively the equivalent of a present-day sound film.

[edit]Film

history from 1914 to 1919

[edit]The film business from 1914 to 1919

The years of the First World War were a complex transitional period for the film industry. It was the period when the exhibition of films changed from short programmes of one-reel films to longer shows consisting of a feature film of four reels or longer, though still supported by short films. The exhibition venues also changed from small nickelodeon cinemas to larger cinemas charging higher prices. These higher prices were partly justified by the new film stars who were now being created. In the United States, nearly all the original film companies which formed the Motion Picture Patents Company went out of business in this period because of their resistance to the changeover to long feature films. The one exception to this was the Vitagraph company, which was already moving over to long films by 1914. The move towards shooting more films on the West coast around Los Angeles continued during World War I, until the bulk of American production was carried out there.

The Universal Film Manufacturing Company had been formed in 1912 as an umbrella company for many of the independent producing companies, and continued to grow during the war. Other independent companies were grouped under the Mutual banner in 1912, and there were also important new entrants, particularly the Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company, and Famous Players, which were both formed in 1913 to take advantage of the fact that films could reproduce the real substance of a stage play (plus embellishments), and so the best plays and actors from the legitimate stage could be enticed into films. In fact, the film industry adopted the term photoplay for motion pictures at this time. In 1914 the Lasky company and Famous Players were amalgamated into Famous Players-Lasky, with distribution of their films handled by the new Paramount Pictures Corporation. Another new major producing company formed during the war years was Triangle, with Mack Sennett, D.W. Griffith and Thomas Ince heading its production units. Despite the talents involved, it only lasted from 1915 to 1917, after which its separate producers took their films to Paramount for distribution. Equally short-lived, but still very important, was the World Film Company, which recruited most of the French directors, cameramen, and designers who had previously been working at the Fort Lee, New Jersey studios for Path and clair. The biggest success of these years was D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), made for Triangle. Griffith applied all the ideas for film staging that he had worked out in his Biograph films to a bigoted white southerner's epic view of the Civil War and its aftermath. Despite protests in the northern cities of the United States organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and others, it took many millions at the box office. Stung by the criticism of his film, Griffith made a new film he had just finished, The Mother and the Law, into one of the strands of an even bigger film with an even bigger theme, Intolerance (1916).

[edit]European film production

In France, film production and exhibition closed down as its personnel became part of the general military mobilization of the country at the beginning of the war. Although film production began again in 1915, it was on a reduced scale, and the biggest companies gradually retired from production, to concentrate on film distribution and exhibition. Hence the cinemas were given over to imported films, particularly American ones. New small companies entered the business, and new young directors arrived to replace those drafted or working in the United States. The most notable of these was Abel Gance. Italian film production held up during the war, with long features already established as the main form. However, there was a disastrous move in subject matter to what were called diva films. These romantic dramas had the female star (the diva) suffering from unhappy love, and striking endless anguished Art Nouveau poses, while surrounded by male admirers and luxury. They were a commercial failure outside Italy. In Denmark the Nordisk company increased its production so much in 1915 and 1916 that it could not sell all its films, which led to a very sharp decline in Danish production, and the end of Denmark's importance on the world film scene. The Nordisk distribution and cinema chain in Germany was effectively expropriated by the

German government in 1917. The Swedish industry did not have this problem, as its production was more in balance with the market, and more importantly, the quality of its films was now superior to those from Denmark. The German film industry was seriously weakened by the war, though with the major companies continuing as before. The distribution organization Projektions-AG Union (PAGU) acted as an umbrella company backing production by individual producers, and the Messter company also made many films. The most important of the new film producers at the time was Joe May, who made a series of thrillers andadventure films through the war years, but Ernst Lubitsch also came into prominence with a series of very successful comedies and dramas. Because of the large local market for films in Russia, the industry there was not harmed by the war at first, although the isolation of the country led many Russian films to develop peculiarly distinctive features. The Khanzhonkov company retained its dominance, but the Ermoliev company, which had been formed in 1914, became its principal competitor, propelled by the work of its star, Ivan Mosjoukin, and principal director, Yakov Protazanov. The Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 did not eliminate the privately owned film companies at first, though production was reduced through 1918. It was only in 1919 that the exodus of talent from the country took place, and fiction film production was reduced to practically nothing.

[edit]Film studios
The major change in film production methods in the United States during this period was the change to shooting in dark studios. The existing glass-roofed studios were blacked out, and the many new ones being built around Los Angeles were constructed with solid walls and ceilings. This meant that shooting could continue all day and night, without being limited by the changing sunlight. The general diffuse daylighting in the old studios was completely replaced with floodlights, and the actors were individually lit with floodlights on floorstands. The use of a spotlight from high at the back onto the actors to rimlight them became more frequent, and around 1918 some American cameramen started to use spotlights to light the actors from the front. All this meant that the figures of the actors were modelled more by the lighting, and more separated from the background by the lower light levels now used on the sets. This was a major step towards the standard studio lighting methods of the sound period. At the same time there was the beginning of a move towards using artificial light to light the actors on location, and some of the biggest studios bought electric generator trucks for this purpose. All these developments took years to reach Europe

[edit]Irising and soft focus

Complex vignette shot in die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess).

A very noticeable technical development was the widespread adoption of irising-in and out to begin and end scenes. This is the revelation of a film shot by its appearance inside a small circular vignette mask which gradually gets larger till it expands beyond the frame, and the whole image is in the clear. D.W. Griffith, who used it relentlessly, was responsible for the popularization of this device. By 1918 the use of the iris to begin and end sequences was starting to decrease in the United States, though in Europe it was just starting to become fashionable. At that date it is quite easy to find American films such as Stella Maris in which only fades are used. There were other variants of the simple iris as well and in these the mask opening or closing in front of the lens had shapes other than circular. One of the more frequent of these shapes was the opening slit; a vertical central split appears in the totally black frame, and widens till the whole frame is clear, revealing the scene that is about to start. Eventually the diagonally opening slit appeared as well, and then there was the diamond-shaped opening iris, as in Poor Little Peppina andAlsace (1916), rather than the usual circle. Again, all of these variant forms were very infrequently used, and when they did occur in American films it was usually in the introductory stages. By 1918 the edges of ordinary circular irises were becoming very fuzzy when they were used in American films. Enclosing the image inside static vignettes or masks of shapes other than circular also began to appear in films during the years 1914-1919, including symbolic shapes such as a cruciform cut-out in the Mary Pickford film Stella Maris (Marshall Neilan, 1918), and Maurice Elvey in Britain put romantic scenes inside a heart-shaped mask in Nelson; The Story of England's Immortal Naval Hero (1918) and The Rocks of Valpr (1919). The most elegant variants occur in some films Ernst Lubitsch made in 1919. In Die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess) a triple layer of horizontal rectangles with rounded ends enclose sets of dancing feet at the frenzied peak of a foxtrot, and in Die Puppe (The Doll) a dozen gossiping mouths are each enclosed in individual small circular vignettes arranged in a matrix.

A new idea taken over from still photography was soft focus. This began in 1915, with some shots being intentionally thrown out of focus for expressive effect, as in Mary Pickford's Fanchon the Cricket. The idea developed slowly through the war years, until in D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1918) all the Close Ups of Lillian Gish are heavily diffused by the use of layers of fine black cotton mesh placed in front of the lens. Heavy lens diffusion was also used on all the other shots carrying forward the romantic and sentimental parts of the story of this film.

[edit]Subjective effects
It was during this period that camera effects intended to convey the subjective feelings of characters in a film really began to be established. These could now be done as Point of View (POV) shots, as in Sidney Drew's The Story of the Glove (1915), where a wobbly hand-held shot of a door and its keyhole represents the POV of a drunken man. In Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) a camera shot tilting sideways is intended to convey delirium, and by 1918 the idea had got to Russia, in Baryshnya i khuligan (The Lady and the Hooligan), where the Hooligan's infatuation with the Lady is conveyed by his Point of View of her splitting into a multiply superimposed image. The use of anamorphic (in the general sense of distorted shape) images first appears in these years with Abel Gance's la Folie du Docteur Tube (The Madness of Dr. Tube). In this film the effect of a drug administered to a group of people was suggested by shooting the scenes reflected in a distorting mirrorof the fair-ground type. Later we have Till the Clouds Roll By (Victor Fleming, 1919), where anamorphosis is used to depict the nightmare effects of indigestion in a comic manner. In fact, like so many film effects that distort the representation of reality, anamorphosis was first used exclusively in comic contexts.

[edit]"Poetic Cinema" and symbolism

Symbolic effects taken over from conventional literary and artistic tradition continued to make some appearances in films during these years. In D.W. Griffith's The Avenging Conscience (1914), the title The birth of the evil thought precedes a series of three shots of the protagonist looking at a spider, and ants eating an insect, though at a later point in the film when he prepares to kill someone these shots are cut straight in without explanation. Possibly as a result of Griffith's influence, 1915 was a big year for symbolism, allegories, and parables in the American cinema. Films following this route invariably included female figures in light, skimpy draperies, and indeed sometimes wearing nothing at all, doing expressive dances or striking plastic poses in sylvan settings. Titles include Lois Weber's Hypocrites, Vitagraph'sYouth, someone else's Purity, and so on. The Primrose Path starts with a large painting illustrating the concept, which dissolves into a replica of the same scene with actors posed, and then they come to life, as these would soon become popular aspects of film making. This is then amplified by closer detailed live action representations of stations on The Primrose Path. An interesting German example from a few years later is Robert Reinert's Opium (1919), which has some notable innovations in the use of Insert shots to help convey the sensation of the drug reveries. These

are travelling landscape shots taken from a boat going down a river, and they are intentionally shot out of focus, or underexposed, or cut into the film upside down. Symbolist art and literature from the turn of the century also had a more general effect on a small number of films made in Italy and Russia. The supine acceptance of death resulting from passion and forbidden longings was a major feature of this art, and states of delirium dwelt on at length were important as well. The first Russian examples were all made by Yevgeni Bauer for Khanzhonkov during the First World War, and include Grezy, Schastye vechnoi nochi, and Posle smerti, all from 1915. These to some extent live up to the promise of the `decadent' aesthetic suggested by their titles; Daydreams, Happiness of Eternal Night, and After Death. Schastye vechnoi nochi includes a visually very striking vision of a medusa-like monster superimposed on a night-time snow scene, and *Posle smerti*has a somewhat subtler dream vision of a dead girl, picked out by extra arc lighting, walking through a wind-blown cornfield in the dusk. In Italy, another country somewhat isolated filmically by the war, the same kind of realization of the fin-de-siecle decadent symbolist aesthetic can be found, mostly in films associated with the diva phenomenon. The most complete example, which also has decor to match, is Charles Kraus' Il gatto nero (The Black Cat). This last is one of the few films of this kind to use atmospheric insert shots to heighten the mood. The first film explicitly intended by its maker to be a visual analogue of poetry, Marcel L'Herbier'sRose-France (1919), continues further along these same paths.

[edit]Insert Shots

Insert shot in Old Wives for New (Cecil B. DeMille, 1918)

The use of Insert Shots, i.e. Close Ups of objects other than faces, was established very early, but apart from the special case of Inserts of a letter that was being read by one of the characters, they were infrequently used before 1914. It is really only with his *The Avenging Conscience*of 1914 that a new phase in the use of the Insert Shot starts. As well as the symbolic inserts already mentioned, The Avenging Conscience also made extensive use of large numbers of Big Close Up shots of clutching hands and tapping feet as a means of

emphasizing those parts of the body as indicators of psychological tension. Griffith never went so far in this direction again, but his use of the Insert made its real impression on other American film-makers during the years 1914-1919. Cecil B. DeMille was a leading figure in the increased use of the Insert, and by 1918 he had reached the point of including about 9 Inserts in every 100 shots in The Whispering Chorus. He also pushed the insert into areas of visual sensuality inaccessible to D.W. Griffith, with such images as a Close Up of a silver-plated revolver nestling in a pile of silken sexy ribbons in a drawer in Old Wives for New (1918).

[edit]The atmospheric insert

Like many other devices that were more fully developed in Europe during the next decade, what could be called the atmospheric Insert Shot made its first appearance in American films during the years before 1919. This kind of shot is one in a scene which neither contains any of the characters in the story, nor is a Point of View shot seen by one of them. An early example is in Maurice Tourneur's The Pride of the Clan(1917), in which there is a series of shots of waves beating on a rocky shore which are shown when the locale of the story, which is about the harsh lives of fisher folk, is being introduced. Simpler and cruder examples from the same year occurs in William S. Hart'sThe Narrow Trail, in which a single shot of the mouth of San Francisco Bay taken against the light (the Golden Gate) is preceded by a narrative title explaining its symbolic function in the story. This film also contains a shot of wild hills and valleys cut in as one character comments that the country far from the city is so clean and pure. By 1918 we can find a shot of the sky being used to reflect the mood of one of the characters without specific explanation in The Gun Woman (Frank Borzage), but it must be emphasized that these examples are very rare, and did not either then, or within the next several years, constitute regular practice in the American cinema. The Tourneur example just mentioned also could stand as part of the beginning of the montage sequence. Maurice Elvey's Nelson - England's Immortal Naval Hero (1919) has a symbolic sequence dissolving from a picture of Kaiser Wilhelm II to a peacock, and then to a battleship. The atmospheric Insert began its notable career in European art cinema in Marcel L'Herbier'sRoseFrance. Here amongst the intentionally poetic uses of vignettes and filters and literary intertitles, a shot of the empty path once trod by the lovers is used to evoke the past.

[edit]Continuity cinema
The years 1914-1919 in America also saw the consolidation of the forms of what was to become the dominant mode of commercial cinema: continuity cinema, or classical cinema. During this period there were other styles that were still important, and these can be considered to lie along a spectrum between the best examples of continuity cinema at one extreme, and at the other extreme the DIS-continuity cinema of D.W. Griffith. There are a number of factors involved in the strong and apparent visual discontinuities between successive shots in Griffith's films, and the use of cross-cutting between parallel actions is only the most obvious of these. In 1915, cuts within the duration of a scene were still relatively infrequent in his films, and when they do occur they were frequently from Long Shot or Medium Long Shot (which were the shots he most

used) to a Big Close Up of an insert detail, which only occupied a small part of the frame in the previous shot. This in itself introduces a fairly strong visual discontinuity across the cut, but as well as that, the cut-in shot might often have a circular vignette mask if it were a Close Up of a person, so reinforcing the effect. And sometimes the now-standard Griffith iris-out and iris-in might also be left on the inserted shot, even though it had action continuity with the shots on either side of it. As well as all this there was Griffith's habit of moving the action into another shot in an adjoining space, and then back again if it was at all possible, which produced a marked change in background, which also made its small contribution to the discontinuity between shots. One of the advanced continuity techniques involves the exact way the movement of actors from a shot in one location to another in a neighbouring location is handled. At best this kind of transition had previously been dealt with by having the directions of travel of the actor in the two shots correspond on the screen, but in a film such as The Bank Burglar's Fate (Jack Adolfi, 1914), one can see shot transitions in which a cut is made from an actor just leaving the frame, to a shot of him well inside the frame in an adjoining location, which have the positions and directions so well chosen that to the casual eye his movement appears quite continuous, and the real space and time ellipsis between the shots is concealed. Other good examples of this technique for eliminating several yards of waste space and a few seconds of waste time can be seen in Ralph Ince's films, particularly The Right Girl (1915), and by 1919 it was widely diffused in American films, but not in those made in Europe. All this connects with the rise of the use of cutting to different angles within a scene during the years 1914-1919, and in particular to the development of reverse-angle cutting.

[edit]Reverse-angle cutting
Cutting to different angles within a scene now became well-established as a technique for dissecting a scene into shots in American films. This approach had appeared a few times in earlier years, but in general cuts to or from a closer shot within a scene were still being made more or less down the lens axis as established in the Long Shot of the scene in question. The particular form of cutting to different angles within a scene in which the direction changes by more than ninety degrees is called reverse-angle cutting by film-makers. The leading figure in the full development of reverse-angle cutting was Ralph Ince. Films that he made at Vitagraph in 1915 such as The Right Girl and His Phantom Sweetheart have a large number of reverse-angle cuts in interior, as well as exterior, scenes. Other directors were also just starting to take up this style in 1915, for instance William S. Hart in Bad Buck of Santa Ynez. As for Griffith, in Birth of a Nation there are just eight cuts to reverse-angle shots in the scene in Ford's Theatre, while elsewhere throughout the two-and-a-half hour length of this film there are only four more true reverseangle cuts. Nevertheless, the Griffith style of film-making was still followed in its full idiosyncrasy, with extensive use of side by side spaces and a definite front for the camera, in most slapstick comedy. Directors of dramatic films who had worked Griffith also followed his style fairly closely, and it the standard for films made by his Fine Arts section of the Triangle company.

By 1916 there are a number of films in which there are around 15 to 20 true reverse-angle cuts per hundred shot transitions, such as The Deserter (Scott Sidney) and Going Straight. By the end of the war such films formed an appreciable but minor part of production: e.g. The Gun Woman (F. Borzage, 1918) and Jubilo (Clarence Badger, 1919). All this hardly concerned European cinema, where those few reverseangle cuts used were mostly between a watcher and what he sees from his Point of View, both being filmed in a fairly distant shot. However, after the end of the war some of the brighter young directors such as Lubitsch started using a few reverse-angle cuts, mostly in association with Point of View cutting.

[edit]The flash-back
The use of flash-back structures continued to develop in this period, and the usual way of entering and leaving a flash-back was through a dissolve, and this was in fact the principal use at this time for this device. The Vitagraph company's The Man That Might Have Been (William Humphrey, 1914), is even more complex, with a series of reveries and flash-backs that contrast the protagonist's real passage through life with what might have been, if his son had not died. In this film dissolves are used both to enter and leave the flash-backs, and also the wish-dreams, and also for a time-lapse inside a reverie at one point. But fades are also used for these purposes in this and other films of the period, and flashback transitions are also done with irising in other films, and even straight cuts. During World War I the use of flashbacks occurred in films from all the major European film-making countries as well, from Italy (Tigre reale) to Denmark (Evangeliemandens Liv) to Russia (Grezy and Posle smerti), where it arrived in 1915. As the years moved on a sudden decline in the use of long flash-back sequences set in around 1917, but on the other hand the use of a transition to and from a brief single shot memory scene remained quite common in American films. However, there could still be an even more complex flash-back construction in American films in the case of W.S. Van Dyke'sThe Lady of the Dugout (1918). This film has a story that happened long before which is narrated by one character in the framing scene, and initially accompanied by his narrating dialogue in intertitles, though after a while this stops, and the intertitles then convey the dialogue occurring within the flashback. Inside this main flashback there develops cross-cutting to another story, happening at the same time, and at first apparently unconnected with it, though the connection eventually appears. Next, inside this first flashback, the Lady of the title narrates another story, presented in flashback form, but with cutaways inside it back to events occurring in the time frame in which she is doing her narrating. Actually, all this is fairly easy to follow while watching the film, in part because what happens in all these strings of action is relatively simple.

[edit]Cross-cutting between parallel actions

After 1914 cross cutting between parallel actions came to be used whenever appropriate in American films, though this was not the case in European films. It should be noted that a good deal of the American use of cross-cutting was not the rapid alternation between parallel chains of action developed by D.W. Griffith, but a

limited number of alternations to make it possible to leave out uninteresting bits of action with no real plot function. In Europe, some of the most enterprising directors did use cross-cutting sometimes, but they never attained the speed of the many American examples of this technique. Cross-cutting was also used to get new effects of contrast, such as the cross-cut sequence in Cecil B. DeMille's The Whispering Chorus, in which a supposedly dead husband is having a liaison with a Chinese prostitute in an opium den, while simultaneously his unknowing wife is being remarried in church. All this was simple compared to D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916), in which four parallel stories are intercut throughout the whole length of the film, though in this case the stories are more similar than contrasting in their nature. The use of cross-cutting within these parallel stories as well as between them produced a complexity that was beyond the comprehension of the average audience of the time. The influence of Intolerance produced a few other films that combined a number of similar stories having similar themes, such as Maurice Tourneur's Woman (1918), but the box-office failure of Intolerance ensured that these later films had simpler structures.

[edit]The development of film art

The general trend in the development of cinema, led from the United States, was towards using the newly developed specifically filmic devices for expression of the narrative content of film stories, and combining this with the standard dramatic structures already in use in commercial theatre. D.W. Griffith had the highest standing amongst American directors in the industry, basically because of the dramatic excitement he got into his films. But there were others who were also considered as major figures at the time. The first of these was Cecil B. DeMille, whose films, such as The Cheat (1915), brought out the moral dilemmas facing their characters in a more subtle way than Griffith. DeMille was also in closer touch with the reality of contemporary American life. Maurice Tourneur was also highly ranked for the pictorial beauties of his films, together with the subtlety of his handling of fantasy, while at the same time he was capable of getting greater naturalism from his actors at appropriate moments, as in A Girl's Folly (1917). Sidney Drew was the leader in developing polite comedy, while slapstick was refined byFatty Arbuckle and Charles Chaplin, who both started with Mack Sennet's Keystone company. They reduced the usual frenetic pace of Sennett's films to give the audience a chance to appreciate the subtlety and finesse of their movement, and the cleverness of their gags. By 1917 Chaplin was also introducing more dramatic plot into his films, and mixing the comedy with sentiment. In Russia, Yevgeni Bauer put a slow intensity of acting combined with Symbolist overtones onto film in a unique way. In Sweden, Victor Sjstrm made a series of films that combined the realities of people's lives with their surroundings in a striking manner, while Mauritz Stiller developed sophisticated comedy to a new level.

In Germany, Ernst Lubitsch got his inspiration from the stage work of Max Reinhardt, both in bourgeois comedy and in spectacle, and applied this to his films, culminating in his die Puppe (The Doll), die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess) and Madame Dubarry.

[edit]Hollywood

triumphant

Charlie Chaplin with Jackie Coogan inThe Kid (1921)

Until this point, the cinemas of France and Italy had been the most globally popular and powerful. But the United States was already gaining quickly when World War I (19141918) caused a devastating interruption in the European film industries. The American industry, or "Hollywood", as it was becoming known after its new geographical center in California, gained the position it has held, more or less, ever since: film factory for the world, exporting its product to most countries on earth and controlling the market in many of them. By the 1920s, the U.S. reached what is still its era of greatest-ever output, producing an average of 800 feature films annually,[13] or 82% of the global total (Eyman, 1997). The comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the swashbuckling adventures of Douglas Fairbanks and the romances of Clara Bow, to cite just a few examples, made these performers faces well-known on every continent. The Western visual norm that would become classical continuity editing was developed and exported - although its adoption was slower in some non-Western countries without strong realist traditions in art and drama, such as Japan. This development was contemporary with the growth of the studio system and its greatest publicity method, the star system, which characterized American film for decades to come and provided models for other film industries. The studios efficient, top-down control over all stages of their product enabled a new and evergrowing level of lavish production and technical sophistication. At the same time, the system's commercial regimentation and focus on glamorous escapism discouraged daring and ambition beyond a certain degree, a

prime example being the brief but still legendary directing career of the iconoclastic Erich von Stroheim in the late teens and the 20s.

[edit]The

sound era

Experimentation with sound film technology, both for recording and playback, was virtually constant throughout the silent era, but the twin problems of accurate synchronization and sufficient amplification had been difficult to overcome (Eyman, 1997). In 1926, Hollywood studioWarner Bros. introduced the "Vitaphone" system, producing short films of live entertainment acts and public figures and adding recorded sound effects and orchestral scores to some of its major features. During late 1927, Warners released The Jazz Singer, which was mostly silent but contained what is generally regarded as the first synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a feature film; but this process was actually accomplished first by Charles Taze Russell in 1914 with the lengthy film The Photo-Drama of Creation. This drama consisted of picture slides and moving pictures synchronized with phonograph records of talks and music. The early sound-on-disc processes such as Vitaphone were soon superseded by sound-on-film methods like Fox Movietone, DeForest Phonofilm, and RCA Photophone. The trend convinced the largely reluctant industrialists that "talking pictures", or "talkies", were the future. A lot of attempts were made before the success of the Jazz Singer, that can be seen in the List of film sound systems.

[edit]Industry

impact of sound

The change was remarkably swift. By the end of 1929, Hollywood was almost all-talkie, with several competing sound systems (soon to be standardized). Total changeover was slightly slower in the rest of the world, principally for economic reasons. Cultural reasons were also a factor in countries like China and Japan, where silents co-existed successfully with sound well into the 1930s, indeed producing what would be some of the most revered classics in those countries, like Wu Yonggang's The Goddess (China, 1934) and Yasujiro Ozu's Was Born, But... (Japan, 1932). But even in Japan, a figure such as the benshi, the live narrator who was a major part of Japanese silent cinema, found his acting career was ending. Sound further tightened the grip of major studios in numerous countries: the vast expense of the transition overwhelmed smaller competitors, while the novelty of sound lured vastly larger audiences for those producers that remained. In the case of the U.S., some historians credit sound with saving the Hollywood studio system in the face of the Great Depression (Parkinson, 1995). Thus began what is now often called "The Golden Age of Hollywood", which refers roughly to the period beginning with the introduction of sound until the late 1940s. The American cinema reached its peak of efficiently manufactured glamour and global appeal during this period. The top actors of the era are now thought of as the classic film stars, such as Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo, and the greatest box office draw of the 1930s, child performer Shirley Temple.

[edit]Creative

impact of sound

Creatively, however, the rapid transition was a difficult one, and in some ways, film briefly reverted to the conditions of its earliest days. The late '20s were full of static, stagey talkies as artists in front of and behind the camera struggled with the stringent limitations of the early sound equipment and their own uncertainty as to how to utilize the new medium. Many stage performers, directors and writers were introduced to cinema as producers sought personnel experienced in dialogue-based storytelling. Many major silent filmmakers and actors were unable to adjust and found their careers severely curtailed or even ended. This awkward period was fairly short-lived. 1929 was a watershed year: William Wellman with Chinatown Nights and The Man I Love, Rouben Mamoulian with Applause, Alfred Hitchcock with Blackmail (Britain's first sound feature), were among the directors to bring greater fluidity to talkies and experiment with the expressive use of sound (Eyman, 1997). In this, they both benefited from, and pushed further, technical advances in microphones and cameras, and capabilities for editing and post-synchronizing sound (rather than recording all sound directly at the time of filming). Sound films emphasized on black history and benefited different genres more so than silents did. Most obviously, the musical film was born; the first classic-style Hollywood musical was The Broadway Melody (1929) and the form would find its first major creator inchoreographer/director Busby Berkeley (42nd Street, 1933, Dames, 1934). In France, avant-garde director Ren Clair made surreal use of song and dance in comedies like Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) and Le Million (1931). Universal Pictures begin releasing gothic horror films like Dracula and Frankenstein (both 1931). In 1933, RKO released Merian C. Cooper's classic "giant monster" film King Kong. The trend thrived best in India, where the influence of the country's traditional song-and-dance drama made the musical the basic form of most sound films (Cook, 1990); virtually unnoticed by the Western world for decades, this Indian popular cinema would nevertheless become the world's most prolific. (See also Bollywood.) At this time, American gangster films like Little Caesar and Wellman's The Public Enemy (both 1931) became popular. Dialogue now took precedence over "slapstick" in Hollywood comedies: the fast-paced, witty banter of The Front Page (1931) or It Happened One Night (1934), the sexual double entrendres of Mae West (She Done Him Wrong, 1933) or the often subversively anarchic nonsense talk of the Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, 1933). Walt Disney, who had previously been in the short cartoon business, stepped into feature films with the first English-speaking animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; released by RKO Pictures in 1937. 1939, a major year for American cinema, brought such films as The Wizard of Oz and Gone with The Wind.

[edit]The

1940s: the war and post-war years

The desire for wartime propaganda created a renaissance in the film industry in Britain, with realistic war dramas like 49th Parallel (1941),Went the Day Well? (1942), The Way Ahead (1944) and Nol Coward and David Lean's celebrated naval film In Which We Serve in 1942, which won a special Academy Award. These existed alongside more flamboyant films like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life

and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946), as well as Laurence Olivier's 1944 filmHenry V, based on the Shakespearean history Henry V. The success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs allowed Disney to make more animated features like Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942). The onset of US involvement in World War II also brought a proliferation of films as both patriotism and propaganda. American propaganda films included Desperate Journey, Mrs. Miniver, Forever and a Day and Objective Burma. Notable American films from the war years include the antiNazi Watch on the Rhine (1943), scripted by Dashiell Hammett; Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Hitchcock's direction of a script byThornton Wilder; the George M. Cohan biopic, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), starring James Cagney, and the immensely popularCasablanca, with Humphrey Bogart. Bogart would star in 36 films between 1934 and 1942 including John Huston's The Maltese Falcon(1941), one of the first films now considered a classic film noir. In 1941, RKO Pictures released Citizen Kane made by Orson Welles. It is often considered the greatest film of all time. It would set the stage for the modern motion picture, as it revolutionized film story telling. The strictures of wartime also brought an interest in more fantastical subjects. These included Britain's Gainsborough melodramas (includingThe Man in Grey and The Wicked Lady), and films like Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Heaven Can Wait, I Married a Witch and Blithe Spirit. Val Lewton also produced a series of atmospheric and influential small-budget horror films, some of the more famous examples being Cat People, Isle of the Dead and The Body Snatcher. The decade probably also saw the so-called "women's pictures", such as Now, Voyager,Random Harvest and Mildred Pierce at the peak of their popularity. 1946 saw RKO Radio releasing It's a Wonderful Life directed by Frank Capra. Soldiers returning from the war would provide the inspiration for films like The Best Years of Our Lives, and many of those in the film industry had served in some capacity during the war. Samuel Fuller's experiences in World War II would influence his largely autobiographical films of later decades such as The Big Red One. The Actor's Studiowas founded in October 1947 by Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis, and Cheryl Crawford, and the same year Oskar Fischinger filmed Motion Painting No. 1. In 1943, Ossessione was screened in Italy, marking the beginning of Italian neorealism. Major films of this type during the 1940s includedBicycle Thieves, Rome, Open City, and La Terra Trema. In 1952 Umberto D was released, usually considered the last film of this type. In the late 1940s, in Britain, Ealing Studios embarked on their series of celebrated comedies, including Whisky Galore!, Passport to Pimlico,Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Man in the White Suit, and Carol Reed directed his influential thrillers Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol andThe Third Man. David Lean was also rapidly becoming a force in world cinema with Brief Encounter and his Dickens adaptations Great

Expectations and Oliver Twist, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger would experience the best of their creative partnership with films like Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.

[edit]The

1950s

A production scene from the 1950 Hollywood film Julius Caesar starring Charlton Heston.

The House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Hollywood in the early 1950s. Protested by the Hollywood Ten before the committee, the hearings resulted in the blacklisting of many actors, writers and directors, including Chayefsky, Charlie Chaplin, and Dalton Trumbo, and many of these fled to Europe, especially the United Kingdom. The Cold War era zeitgeist translated into a type of near-paranoia manifested inthemes such as invading armies of evil aliens, (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The War of the Worlds); and communist fifth columnists, (The Manchurian Candidate). During the immediate post-war years the cinematic industry was also threatened by television, and the increasing popularity of the medium meant that some film theatres would bankrupt and close. The demise of the "studio system" spurred theself-commentary of films like Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). In 1950, the Lettrists avante-gardists caused riots at the Cannes Film Festival, whenIsidore Isou's Treatise on Slime and Eternity was screened. After their criticism of Charlie Chaplin and split with the movement, the UltraLettrists continued to cause disruptions when they showed their new hypergraphical techniques. The most notorious film is Guy Debord'sHowls for Sade of 1952. Distressed by the increasing number of closed theatres, studios and companies would find new and innovative ways to bring audiences back. These included attempts to literally widen their appeal with new screen formats. Cinemascope, which would remain a 20th Century Foxdistinction until 1967, was announced with 1953's The Robe. VistaVision, Cinerama, and Todd-AO boasted a "bigger is better" approach tomarketing films

to a dwindling US audience. This resulted in the revival of epic films to take advantage of the new big screen formats. Some of the most successful examples of these Biblical and historical spectaculars include The Ten Commandments (1956), The Vikings (1958),Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960) and El Cid (1961). Also during this period a number of other significant films were produced in Todd-AO, developed by Mike Todd shortly before his death, including Oklahoma! (1955), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), South Pacific (1958) andCleopatra (1963) plus many more. Gimmicks also proliferated to lure in audiences. The fad for 3-D film would last for only two years, 19521954, and helped sell House of Waxand Creature from the Black Lagoon. Producer William Castle would tout films featuring "Emergo" "Percepto", the first of a series of gimmicks that would remain popular marketing tools for Castle and others throughout the 1960s. In the U.S., a post-WW2 tendency toward questioning the establishment and societal norms and the early activism of the Civil Rights Movement was reflected in Hollywood films such as Blackboard Jungle (1955), On the Waterfront (1954), Paddy Chayefsky's Marty andReginald Rose's 12 Angry Men (1957). Disney continued making animated films, notably; Cinderella (1950), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), and Sleeping Beauty (1959). He began, however, getting more involved in live action films, producing classics like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), and Old Yeller (1957). Television began competing seriously with films projected in theatres, but surprisingly it promoted more filmgoing rather than curtailing it. Limelight is probably a unique film in at least one interesting respect. Its two leads, Charlie Chaplin and Claire Bloom, were in the industry in no less than three different centuries. In the 19th Century, Chaplin made his theatrical debut at the age of eight, in 1897, in a clog dancing troupe, The Eight Lancaster Lads. In the 21st Century, Bloom is still enjoying a full and productive career, having appeared in dozens of films and television series produced up to and including 2010.

[edit]Golden Age of Asian cinema

Main article: Asian cinema Following the end of World War II in the 1940s, the following decade, the 1950s, marked a 'Golden Age' for non-English world cinema,[14][15]especially for Asian cinema.[16][17] Many of the most critically acclaimed Asian films of all time were produced during this decade, includingYasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy (19551959) and The Music Room (1958), Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu(1954) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), Raj Kapoor's Awaara (1951), Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds (1955), Guru Dutt's Pyaasa (1957) andKaagaz Ke Phool (1959), and the Akira Kurosawa films Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Throne of Blood(1957).[16][17]

During Japanese cinema's 'Golden Age' of the 1950s, successful films included Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954) and The Hidden Fortress (1958) by Akira Kurosawa, as well as Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953) and Ishir Honda's Godzilla (1954).[18] These films have had a profound influence on world cinema. In particular, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai has been remade several times as Western films, such as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), and has also inspired several Bollywood films, such as Sholay (1975) and China Gate (1998). Rashomon was also remade as The Outrage (1964), and inspired films with "Rashomon effect" storytelling methods, such as Andha Naal (1954), The Usual Suspects (1995) and Hero (2002). The Hidden Fortress was also the inspiration behind George Lucas'Star Wars (1977). Other famous Japanese filmmakers from this period include Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Inagaki and Nagisa Oshima.[16] Japanese cinema later became one of the main inspirations behind the New Hollywood movement of the 1960s to 1980s. During Indian cinema's 'Golden Age' of the 1950s, it was producing 200 films annually, while Indian independent films gained greater recognition through international film festivals. One of the most famous was The Apu Trilogy (19551959) from critically acclaimed Bengali film director Satyajit Ray, whose films had a profound influence on world cinema, with directors such as Akira Kurosawa,[19] Martin Scorsese,[20][21] James Ivory,[22] Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, Franois Truffaut,[23] Steven Spielberg,[24][25][26] Carlos Saura,[27] JeanLuc Godard,[28] Isao Takahata,[29] Gregory Nava, Ira Sachs, Wes Anderson[30] and Danny Boyle[31] being influenced by his cinematic style. According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly, the "youthful comingof-age dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy".[32] Subrata Mitra's cinematographic technique of bounce lighting also originates from The Apu Trilogy.[33] Other famous Indian filmmakers from this period include Guru Dutt,[16] Ritwik Ghatak,[17] Mrinal Sen, Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, K. Asif and Mehboob Khan.[34] The cinema of South Korea also experienced a 'Golden Age' in the 1950s, beginning with director Lee Kyuhwan's tremendously successful remake of Chunhyang-jon (1955).[35] That year also saw the release of Yangsan Province by the renowned director, Kim Ki-young, marking the beginning of his productive career. Both the quality and quantity of filmmaking had increased rapidly by the end of the 1950s. South Korean films, such as Lee Byeong-il's 1956 comedy Sijibganeun nal (The Wedding Day), had begun winning international awards. In contrast to the beginning of the 1950s, when only 5 films were made per year, 111 films were produced in South Korea in 1959.[36] The 1950s was also a 'Golden Age' for Philippine cinema, with the emergence of more artistic and mature films, and significant improvement in cinematic techniques among filmmakers. The studio system produced frenetic activity in the local film industry as many films were made annually and several local talents started to earn recognition abroad. The premiere Philippine directors of the era included Gerardo de Leon,Gregorio Fernandez, Eddie Romero, Lamberto Avellana, and Cirio Santiago.[37][38]

[edit]1960s
During the 1960s, the studio system in Hollywood declined, because many films were now being made on location in other countries, or using studio facilities abroad, such as Pinewood in the UK and Cinecitt in Rome. "Hollywood" films were still largely aimed at family audiences, and it was often the more old-fashioned films that produced the studios' biggest successes. Productions like Mary Poppins(1964), My Fair Lady (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965) were among the biggest money-makers of the decade. The growth in independent producers and production companies, and the increase in the power of individual actors also contributed to the decline of traditional Hollywood studio production. There was also an increasing awareness of foreign language cinema during this period. During the late 1950s and 1960s, the French New Wave directors such as Franois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard produced films such as Les quatre cents coups, Breathless and Jules et Jimwhich broke the rules of Hollywood cinema's narrative structure. As well, audiences were becoming aware of Italian films like Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and the stark dramas of Sweden's Ingmar Bergman. In Britain, the "Free Cinema" of Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and others lead to a group of realistic and innovative dramas includingSaturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving and This Sporting Life. Other British films such as Repulsion, Darling, Alfie, Blowupand Georgy Girl (all in 1965-1966) helped to reduce prohibitions sex and nudity on screen, while the casual sex and violence of the James Bond films, beginning with Dr. No in 1962 would render the series popular worldwide. During the 1960s, Ousmane Sembne produced several French- and Wolof-language films and became the 'father' of African Cinema. In Latin America, the dominance of the "Hollywood" model was challenged by many film makers. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino called for a politically engaged Third Cinema in contrast to Hollywood and the European auteur cinema. Further, the nuclear paranoia of the age, and the threat of an apocalyptic nuclear exchange (like the 1962 close-call with the USSR during theCuban missile crisis) prompted a reaction within the film community as well. Films like Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe withHenry Fonda were produced in a Hollywood that was once known for its overt patriotism and wartime propaganda. In documentary film the sixties saw the blossoming of Direct Cinema, an observational style of film making as well as the advent of more overtly partisan films like In the Year of the Pig about the Vietnam War by Emile de Antonio. By the late 1960s however, Hollywood filmmakers were beginning to create more innovative and groundbreaking films that reflected the social revolution taken over much of the western world such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Easy Rider (1969) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Bonnie and Clyde is often considered the beginning of the so-called New Hollywood.

In Japanese cinema, Academy Award winning director Akira Kurosawa produced Yojimbo (1961), which like his previous films also had a profound influence around the world. The influence of this film is most apparent in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Walter Hill'sLast Man Standing (1996). Yojimbo was also the origin of the "Man with No Name" trend. Meanwhile in India, the Academy Award winning Bengali director Satyajit Ray wrote a script for The Alien in 1967, based on a Bangla science fiction story he himself had written in 1962. The film was intended to be his debut in Hollywood but the production was eventually cancelled. Nevertheless, the script went on to influence later films such as Steven Spielberg's E.T. (1982) and Rakesh Roshan's Koi... Mil Gaya (2003).

[edit]1970s:

The 'New Hollywood' or Post-classical cinema

'The New Hollywood' and 'post-classical cinema' are terms used to describe the period following the decline of the studio system during the 1950s and 1960s and the end of the production code, (which was replaced in 1968 by the MPAA film rating system). During the 1970s, filmmakers increasingly depicted explicit sexual content and showed gunfight and battle scenes that included graphic images of bloody deaths. 'Post-classical cinema' is a term used to describe the changing methods of storytelling of the "New Hollywood" producers. The new methods of drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired during the classical/Golden Age period: story chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature unsettling "twist endings", main characters may behave in a morally ambiguous fashion, and the lines between the antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The beginnings of post-classical storytelling may be seen in 1940s and 1950s film noir films, in films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock's Psycho. 1971 marked the release of controversial films likeStraw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection and Dirty Harry. This sparked heated controversy over the perceived escalation of violence in cinema. During the 1970s, a new group of American filmmakers emerged, such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Roman Polanski, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Brian De Palma. This coincided with the increasing popularity of the auteur theory in film literature and the media, which posited that a film director's films express their personal vision and creative insights. The development of the auteur style of filmmaking helped to give these directors far greater control over their projects than would have been possible in earlier eras. This led to some great critical and commercial successes, like Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Coppola's The Godfather films, Polanski's Chinatown, Spielberg's Jawsand Close Encounters of the Third Kind and George Lucas's Star Wars. It also, however, resulted in some failures, including Peter Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love and Michael Cimino's hugely expensive Western epic Heaven's Gate, which helped to bring about the demise of its backer, United Artists. The financial disaster of Heaven's Gate marking the end of the visionary "auteur" directors of the "New Hollywood", who had unrestrained creative and financial freedom to develop films. The phenomenal success in

the 1970s of Jaws and Star Wars in particular, led to the rise of the modern "blockbuster". Hollywood studios increasingly focused on producing a smaller number of very large budget films with massive marketing and promotional campaigns. This trend had already been foreshadowed by the commercial success of disaster films such as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. During the mid-1970s, more pornographic theatres, euphemistically called "adult cinemas", were established, and the legal production ofhardcore pornographic films began. Porn films such as Deep Throat and its star Linda Lovelace became something of a popular culture phenomenon and resulted in a spate of similar sex films. The porn cinemas finally died out during the 1980s, when the popularization of the home VCR and pornography videotapes allowed audiences to watch sex films at home. In the early 1970s, English-language audiences became more aware of the new West German cinema, with Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders among its leading exponents. In world cinema, the 1970s saw a dramatic increase in the popularity of martial arts films, largely due to its reinvention by Bruce Lee, who departed from the artistic style of traditional Chinese martial arts films and added a much greater sense of realism to them with his Jeet Kune Do style. This began with The Big Boss (1971), which was a major success across Asia. However, he didn't gain fame in the Western worlduntil shortly after his death in 1973, when Enter the Dragon was released. The film went on to become the most successful martial arts film in cinematic history, popularized the martial arts film genre across the world, and cemented Bruce Lee's status as a cultural icon. Hong Kong action cinema, however, was in decline due to a wave of "Bruceploitation" films. This trend eventually came to an end in 1978 with the martial arts comedy films, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master, directed by Yuen Woo-ping and starring Jackie Chan, laying the foundations for the rise of Hong Kong action cinema in the 1980s. While the musical film genre had declined in Hollywood by this time, musical films were quickly gaining popularity in the cinema of India, where the term "Bollywood" was coined for the growing Hindi film industry in Bombay (now Mumbai) that ended up dominating South Asian cinema, overtaking the more critically acclaimed Bengali film industry in popularity. Hindi filmmakers combined the Hollywood musical formula with the conventions of ancient Indian theatre to create a new film genre called "Masala", which dominated Indian cinema throughout the late 20th century.[39] These "Masala" films portrayed action, comedy, drama, romance and melodrama all at once, with "filmi" song and dance routines thrown in. This trend began with films directed by Manmohan Desai and starring Amitabh Bachchan, who remains one of the most popular film stars in South Asia. The most popular Indian film of all time was Sholay (1975), a "Masala" film inspired by a real-life dacoitas well as Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and the Spaghetti Westerns. The end of the decade saw the first major international marketing of Australian cinema, as Peter Weir's films Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave and Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith gained

critical acclaim. In 1979, Australian filmmaker George Miller also garnered international attention for his violent, low-budget action film Mad Max.

[edit]1980s:

sequels, blockbusters and videotape

During the 1980s, audiences began increasingly watching films on their home VCRs. In the early part of that decade, the film studios tried legal action to ban home ownership of VCRs as a violation of copyright, which proved unsuccessful. Eventually, the sale and rental of films onhome video became a significant "second venue" for exhibition of films, and an additional source of revenue for the film industries. The Lucas-Spielberg combine would dominate "Hollywood" cinema for much of the 1980s, and lead to much imitation. Two follow-ups to Star Wars, three to Jaws, and three Indiana Jones films helped to make sequels of successful films more of an expectation than ever before. Lucas also launched THX Ltd, a division of Lucasfilm in 1982,[40] while Spielberg enjoyed one of the decade's greatest successes in E.T. the ExtraTerrestrial the same year. 1982 also saw the release of Disney's Tron which was one of the first films from a major studio to usecomputer graphics extensively. American independent cinema struggled more during the decade, although Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull(1980), After Hours (1985), and The King of Comedy (1983) helped to establish him as one of the most critically acclaimed American film makers of the era. Also during 1983 Scarface was released, was very profitable and resulted in even greater fame for its leading actor Al Pacino. Probably the most successful film commercially was vended during 1989: Tim Burton's version of Bob Kane's creation, Batman, exceeded box-office records. Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the demented Joker earned him a total of $60,000,000 after figuring in his percentage of the gross. British cinema was given a boost during the early 1980s by the arrival of David Puttnam's company Goldcrest Films. The films Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, The Killing Fields and A Room with a View appealed to a "middlebrow" audience which was increasingly being ignored by the major Hollywood studios. While the films of the 1970s had helped to define modern blockbuster motion pictures, the way "Hollywood" released its films would now change. Films, for the most part, would premiere in a wider number of theatres, although, to this day, some films still premiere using the route of the limited/roadshow release system. Against some expectations, the rise of the multiplex cinema did not allow less mainstream films to be shown, but simply allowed the major blockbusters to be given an even greater number of screenings. However, films that had been overlooked in cinemas were increasingly being given a second chance on home video. During the 1980s, Japanese cinema experienced a revival, largely due to the success of anime films. At the beginning of the 1980s, Space Battleship Yamato (1973) and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), both of which were unsuccessful as television series, were remade as films and became hugely successful in Japan. In particular, Mobile Suit Gundam sparked the Gundam franchise of Real Robot mecha anime. The success of Macross: Do You Remember Love? also sparked a Macross franchise of mecha anime. This was also the decade when Studio Ghibli was founded. The studio produced Hayao Miyazaki's first fantasy films, Nausica of

the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Castle in the Sky (1986), as well as Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies (1988), all of which were very successful in Japan and received worldwide critical acclaim. Original video animation (OVA) films also began during this decade; the most influential of these early OVA films was Noboru Ishiguro's cyberpunk film Megazone 23 (1985). The most famous anime film of this decade was Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk film Akira(1988), which although initially unsuccessful at Japanese theaters, went on to become an international success. Hong Kong action cinema, which was in a state of decline due to endless Bruceploitation films after the death of Bruce Lee, also experienced a revival in the 1980s, largely due to the reinvention of the action film genre by Jackie Chan. He had previously combined the comedy film andmartial arts film genres successfully in the 1978 films Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master. The next step he took was in combining this comedy martial arts genre with a new emphasis on elaborate and highly dangerous stunts, reminiscent of the silent film era. The first film in this new style of action cinema was Project A (1983), which saw the formation of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team as well as the "Three Brothers" (Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao). The film added elaborate, dangerous stunts to the fights and slapstick humor, and became a huge success throughout the Far East. As a result, Chan continued this trend with martial arts action films containing even more elaborate and dangerous stunts, including Wheels on Meals (1984), Police Story (1985), Armour of God (1986), Project A Part II (1987),Police Story 2 (1988), and Dragons Forever (1988). Other new trends which began in the 1980s were the "girls with guns" sub-genre, for which Michelle Yeoh gained fame; and especially the "heroic bloodshed" genre, revolving around Triads, largely pioneered by John Woo and for which Chow Yun-fat became famous. These Hong Kong action trends were later adopted by many Hollywood action films in the 1990s and 2000s.

[edit]1990s:

New special effects, independent films, and DVDs

Cinema admissions in 1995

The early 1990s saw the development of a commercially successful independent cinema in the United States. Although cinema was increasingly dominated by special-effects films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park(1993) and Titanic (1997), independent films like Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) and Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) had significant commercial success both at the cinema and on home video. Filmmakers associated with the Danish filmmovement Dogme 95 introduced a

manifesto aimed to purify filmmaking. Its first few films gained worldwide critical acclaim, after which the movement slowly faded out. Major American studios began to create their own "independent" production companies to finance and produce non-mainstream fare. One of the most successful independents of the 1990s, Miramax Films, was bought by Disney the year before the release of Tarantino's runaway hit Pulp Fiction in 1994. The same year marked the beginning of film and video distribution online. Animated films aimed at family audiences also regained their popularity, with Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991),Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994). During 1995, the first feature length computer-animated feature, Toy Story, was produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Disney. After the success of Toy Story, computer animation would grow to become the dominant technique for feature length animation, which would allow competing film companies such as Dreamworks Animation and 20th Century Fox to effectively compete with Disney with successful films of their own. During the late 1990s, another cinematic transition began, from physical film stock to digital cinema technology. Meanwhile DVDs became the new standard for consumer video, replacing VHS tapes.

[edit]2000s
The documentary film also rose as a commercial genre for perhaps the first time, with the success of films such as March of the Penguinsand Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11. A new genre was created with Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of Iraq, when 150 inexpensive DV cameras were distributed across Iraq, transforming ordinary people into collaborative filmmakers. The success of Gladiator lead to a revival of interest in epic cinema, and Moulin Rouge! renewed interest in musical cinema. Home theatre systems became increasingly sophisticated, as did some of the special edition DVDs designed to be shown on them. The Lord of the Rings trilogywas released on DVD in both the theatrical version and in a special extended version intended only for home cinema audiences. There is a growing problem of digital distribution to be overcome with regards to expiration of copyrights, content security, and enforcing copyright. There is higher compression for films, and Moore's law allows for increasingly cheaper technology. More films were also being released simultaneously to IMAX cinema, the first was in 2002's Disney animation Treasure Planet; and the first live action was in 2003's The Matrix Revolutions and a re-release of The Matrix Reloaded. Later in the decade, The Dark Knight was the first major feature film to have been at least partially shot in IMAX technology. There has been an increasing globalization of cinema during this decade, with foreign-language films gaining popularity in English-speaking markets. Examples of such films include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Mandarin), Amelie (French), Lagaan (Hindi), Spirited Away(Japanese), City of God (Portuguese), The Passion of the Christ (Aramaic), Apocalypto (Mayan), Slumdog Millionaire (a third in Hindi), andInglourious Basterds (multiple languages).

Recently there has been a revival in 3D film popularity the first being James Cameron's Ghosts of the Abyss which was released as the first full-length 3-D IMAX feature filmed with the Reality Camera System. This camera system used the latest HD video cameras, not film, and was built for Cameron by Emmy nominated Director of Photography Vince Pace, to his specifications. The same camera system was used to film Spy Kids 3D: Game Over (2003), Aliens of the Deep IMAX (2005), and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D (2005).

[edit]2010s
After James Cameron's 3D film Avatar became the highest-grossing film of all time, 3D films have gained increasing popularity with many other films being released in 3D, with the best critical and financial successes being in the field of feature film animation such asDreamWorks Animation's How To Train Your Dragon and Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar's Toy Story 3. As of 2010, the largest film industries by number of feature films produced are those of India, the United States and China.[41]

[edit]The Long Tail

One major new development in the early 21st century is the development of systems that make it much easier for regular people to write, shoot, edit and distribute their own films without the large apparatus of the film industry. This phenomenon and its repercussions are outlined in Chris Anderson's theory, The Long Tail.

[edit]The

underground

Main article: Underground film Alongside the Hollywood tradition, there has also been an "underground film" tradition of small-budget, often self-produced works created outside of the studio system and without the involvement of labor unions.

[edit]See

also

B film Cinema of the world Culture history Experimental film Fictional film Film & History Film noir History of science fiction films Kammerspielfilm

List of film formats List of years in film Lists of film topics Newsreel Runaway production Silent film Sound film Women's cinema

[edit]References
a b c

1. 2.

Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2003. 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

^ Thompson & Bordwell, Kristin & David (2010). Film History: An Introduction. pp. 34. ISBN 978-0-07338613-3.

3.

^ Wade, Nicholas J.; Finger, Stanley (2001). "The eye as an optical instrument: from camera obscura to Helmholtz's perspective".Perception 30 (10): 11571177. doi:10.1068/p3210.PMID 11721819. "The principles of the camera obscura first began to be correctly analysed in the eleventh century, when they were outlined by Ibn al-Haytham."

4.

^ David H. Kelley, Exploring Ancient Skies: An Encyclopedic Survey of Archaeoastronomy:

"The first clear description of the device appears in the Book of Optics of Alhazen."

5.

^ Bradley Steffens (2006), Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist, Chapter Five, Morgan Reynolds Publishing, ISBN 1-59935-024-6

6. 7.

a b

Clegg, Brian (2007). The Man Who Stopped Time. Joseph Henry Press. ISBN 978-0-309-10112-7.

^ Braun, Marta, Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (18301904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992/ISBN 0-226-07173-1), p. 190; Robinson, David, From Peepshow to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York and Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 1997/ISBN 0-23110338-7), p. 28.

8.

^ Faszination der Bewegung: Ottomar Anschtz zwischen Photographie und Kino p. 185, Deac Rossell. ISBN 3878777744

9.

^ Industry, liberty, and a vision: Wordsworth Donisthorpe's kinesigraph, Stephen Herbert, p. 13, ISBN 0952394138

10. ^ Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristen. (2003) "Film History An Introduction".New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Company Inc.p.13

11. ^ Witmark, Isidore; Goldberg, Isaac (1939). The House of Witmark. New York: New York OOO. pp. 116. ISBN 0306706865. ASIN B001DZ8MP6. 12. ^ Abel, Richard; Rick Altman (2001). That Most American of Attractions, The Illustrated Song. Indiana University Press. pp. 143153. ISBN 0-253-33988-X. 13. ^ Film History of the 1920s 14. ^ "The Golden Age of the Foreign Film". Film Forum. Retrieved 2009-05-29. 15. ^ Tracy K. Daniels (January 11, 2008). "Hybrid Cinematics: Rethinking the role of filmmakers of color in American Cinema". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2009-05-22. 16. ^
a b c d

Kevin Lee (2002-09-05). "A Slanted Canon". Asian American Film Commentary. Retrieved 2009-04-

24. 17. ^
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Totaro, Donato (January 31, 2003). "The "Sight & Sound" of Canons". Offscreen Journal (Canada

Council for the Arts). Retrieved 2009-04-19. 18. ^ Dave Kehr, Anime, Japanese Cinema's Second Golden Age,The New York Times, January 20, 2002. 19. ^ Robinson, A (2003). Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker. I. B. Tauris. p. 96. ISBN 1860649653. 20. ^ Chris Ingui. "Martin Scorsese hits DC, hangs with the Hachet". Hatchet. Retrieved 2006-06-29. 21. ^ Jay Antani (2004). "Raging Bull: A film review". Filmcritic.com. Retrieved 2009-05-04. 22. ^ Sheldon Hall. "Ivory, James (1928-)". Screen Online. Retrieved 2007-02-12. 23. ^ Dave Kehr (May 5, 1995). "THE 'WORLD' OF SATYAJIT RAY: LEGACY OF INDIA'S PREMIER FILM MAKER ON DISPLAY". Daily News. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
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World cinema
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (January 2010)

Most vibrant cinemas around the world based on IMDb. Over 10,000 titles (green), over 5,000 (yellow), over 1,000 (blue)

World cinema

African cinema Asian cinema

East Asian cinema

South Asian cinema Southeast Asian cinema West Asian cinema

European cinema Latin American cinema North American cinema Oceanian cinema

World cinema is a term used primarily in English languagespeaking countries to refer to the films and film industries of non-English speaking countries. It is therefore often used interchangeably with the term foreign film. However, both world cinema and foreign film could be taken to refer to the films of all countries other than one's own, regardless of native language.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 World cinema on DVD 2 World cinema television channels 3 Cinema by continent and country 4 See also 5 Footnotes

Technically, foreign film does not mean the same as foreign language film, but the inference, particularly in the U.S., is that a foreign film is not only foreign in terms of the country of production, but also in terms of the language used. As such, the use of the term foreign film for films produced in the UK, Australia, Canada or other English speaking countries would be uncommon. In other English speaking countries, it would be extremely unlikely to class films made in the U.S. as foreign films, or belonging to World cinema, as American films are reasonably dominant in all English-language markets. World cinema has an un-official implication of films with "artistic value" as opposed to "Hollywood commercialism." Foreign language films are often grouped with "art house films" and other independent films in DVD stores, cinema listings etc. Unless dubbed into one's native language, foreign language films played in English speaking regions usually have English subtitles. Few films of this kind receive more than a limited release and many are never played in major cinemas. As such the marketing, popularity and gross takings for these films are usually markedly less than for typical Hollywoodblockbusters. The combination of subtitles and

minimal exposure adds to the notion that "World Cinema" has an inferred artistic prestige or intelligence, which may discourage less sophisticated viewers. Additionally, differences in cultural style and tone between foreign and domestic films affects attendance at cinemas and DVD sales.[1] Foreign language films can be commercial, low brow or B-movies. Furthermore, foreign language films can cross cultural boundaries, particularly when the visual spectacle and style is sufficient to overcome people's misgivings. Films of this type are becoming more common, and recent examples such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Amlie and Brotherhood of the Wolf enjoyed great success in American cinemas and DVD sales. The first foreign and foreign language film to top the North American box office was Hero in the fall of 2004.[2]

[edit]World

cinema on DVD

Foreign language films that are particularly successful in international markets may be taken on by the large film distribution companies forDVD releases. At the other end of the scale, many foreign language films are never given a DVD release outside of their home markets. The majority of those DVDs that are given an international release, come out on specialist labels. These labels include:

Arrow Films (UK) - Label specialising in foreign language and cult English language films Artificial Eye (USA and UK) Axiom Films (UK) British Film Institute (UK) Contender Entertainment Group - Label distributing East Asian films. They bought out Medusa Communications in 2005, and own the sub-labels Hong Kong Legends (specialising in films from Hong Kong) and Premier Asia (specialising in films from the rest of East Asia, particularly Japan, South Korea and Thailand). CEG bought out the label.

The Criterion Collection (USA) Dragon Dynasty (USA) - Label specialising in films from East Asia. Eastern Eye (Australia). Facets Multimedia (USA) Film Movement (USA) Fortissimo Films (Netherlands / international) ImaginAsian Pictures (USA) Janus Films (USA) Kino International (USA) - Label distributing foreign language, arthouse and silent films. Manga Entertainment (USA and UK) - Label specialising in anime. Masters of Cinema (UK)

Mongrel Media (Canada) Optimum Releasing (UK) - Distributor of foreign and English language films in the UK. East Asian films released through their Optimum Asia sub-label.

Palador Pictures (India) - Distributors of highly awarded foreign language films from across the world. Palisades Tartan (USA and UK) - Palisades bought out the back catalogue of Tartan Films when they folded.

Soda Pictures (UK) Studio Canal (France) Tartan Films (USA and UK) - Label distributing a variety of foreign and English language films, though primarily East Asian films. The company consists of Tartan Video in the UK and Tartan Films USA, as well as the Tartan Asia Extreme and Tartan Terror horror labels. The company folded in 2008 and were taken over by Palisades.

[edit]World

cinema television channels

CinMoi (UK channel dedicated to French films, launching January 2009) World Cinema HD (USA) UTV World movies (India) NDTV Lumiere (India) World Movies (Australia)

[edit]Cinema

by continent and country

[hide]

World cinema
Central Africa Democratic Republic of the Congo East Africa Kenya Horn of Africa Somalia Africa Northern Africa Algeria Egypt Morocco Tunisia Southern Africa South Africa Western Africa Burkina Faso Niger Nigeria Senegal

North America Canada (Quebec) Mexico United States (Hollywood) Americas South America Argentina Brazil Chile Colombia Cuba Haiti Mexico Paraguay Peru Puerto Rico Uruguay Venezuela

East Asia China (Hong Kong) Japan Korea Mongolia Taiwan

South Asia Asia

Afghanistan Bangladesh (Bengal) India (Andhra Pradesh Assam Bengal Bollywood Karnataka Kerala Marathi G

India Tamil Nadu West Bengal) Nepal Pakistan (Azad Kashmir Karachi Lahore Peshawar Sindh) Sri Lanka (Jaff

Southeast Asia Burma Cambodia Indonesia Malaysia Philippines Singapore Thailand Vietnam

West Asia Armenia Azerbaijan Bahrain Cyprus Georgia Iran Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Palestine Saudi Arabi

Eastern Europe Bulgaria Czech Republic Hungary Moldova Poland Romania Russia (Russian Empire Soviet Union) Serbia

Northern Europe Denmark Estonia Faroe Islands Finland Iceland Ireland Latvia Lithuania Norway Sweden United Kingdom Europe Southern Europe Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Croatia Greece Italy Macedonia Montenegro Portugal Spain Yugoslavia

Western Europe Austria Belgium France Germany Luxembourg Netherlands Switzerland Turkey

Oceania

Australia Fiji New Zealand Samoa