Cinema of india

Multilinguals Some Indian films are known as "multilinguals," having been filmed in similar but non-identical versions in different languages. This was done in the 1930s. According to Rajadhyaksha and Willemen in the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (1994), in its most precise form, a multilingual is a bilingual or a trilingual [that] was the kind of film made in the 1930s in the studio era, when different but identical takes were made of every shot in different languages, often with different leading stars but identical technical crew and music. Rajadhyaksha and Willemen note that in seeking to construct their Encclopedia, it they often found it "extremely difficult to distinguish multilinguals in this original sense from dubbed versions, remakes, reissues or, in some cases, the same film listed with different titles, presented as separate versions in different languages ... it will take years of scholarly work to establish definitive data in this respe...

Film music Music in Indian cinema is a substantial revenue generator, with the music rights alone accounting for 4–5% of the net revenues generated by a film in India.The major film music companies of India are Saregama and Sony Music. Commercially, film music accounts for 48% India's net music sales. A typical Indian film may have around 5–6 choreographed songs spread throughout the film's length. The demands of a multicultural, increasingly globalised Indian audience often led to a mixing of various local and international musical traditions. 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. Playback singers such as Mohammad Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar drew large crowds with national and international film music stage shows.The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st saw extensive interaction between artists from In...

Genres and styles Masala films Masala is a style of Indian cinema, especially in Bollywood, Cinema of West Bengal 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 masala, a mixture of spices in Indian cuisine. 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 sa...

Influences There have generally been six major influences that have shaped the conventions of Indian popularcinema. 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 stylised 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...

Global discourse Indians during the colonial rule bought film equipment from Europe. The British funded wartime propaganda films during World War II , some of which showed the Indian army pitted against the axis powers, specifically the Empire of Japan, which had managed to infiltrate into India. One such story was Burma Rani, which depicted civilian resistance offered to Japanese occupation by the British and Indians present in Myanmar. Pre-independence businessmen such as J. F. Madan and Abdulally Esoofally traded in global cinema. Indian cinema's early contacts with other regions became visible with its films making early inroads into the Soviet Union, Middle East, Southeast Asia, and China. Mainstream film stars like Raj Kapoor, Rajnikanth, Rajesh Khanna, Madhuri Dixit, Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan gained international fame across Asia and Eastern Europe....