Indian cinema: Bollywood vs Regional cinema

Dedicated to 100 years of Indian Cinema

Think of Indian cinema and the first thing that comes to one's mind is Bollywood. This takes us to a very important question. Does Indian cinema consist only of Hindi films? The answer is a simple 'no'. Apart from Bollywood(the name itself copied from Hollywood), Assamese cinema, Bengali cinema, Bhojpuri cinema, Gujarati cinema, Kannada cinema, Konkani cinema, Malayalam cinema, Marathi cinema, Oriya cinema, Punjabi cinema, Tamil cinema and Telugu cinema together make up 'The Indian Film Industry'. Indians might boast about releasing over 1000 films in a calender year but they fail to realize that it is not only Bollywood which contributes in this regard. In fact it is the Telugu film industry which releases the maximum number of films in India in a single year. Every film industry other than Bollywood is referred to as 'Regional cinema'. So what makes Bollywood special? Bollywood films have been able to overshadow the so-called 'Regional cinema' mainly due to two reasons, the first being the large percentage of Hindi-speaking population in India and the second being its location, Mumbai. Mumbai, being the financial capital of the country pumps in enough money for Bollywood to survive and prosper. Even then, it is the South Indian film industry which holds about 75% of all film revenues in India. The regular cine-going public in India is unaware of films like 'Shwaas' or actors like Sivaji Ganesan. This is the situation of films and movie-goers in a country which is celebrating 100 years of Indian cinema where movies like 'Ready' and 'All the Best' turn out to be hits and good cinema and 'regional cinema' continue to languish in a state of relative obscurity.