Bollywood means films produced by the Mumbai film industry, primarily in the Hindi language, distributed across the normal commercial film circuits of northern India, and containing song and dance item numbers as an integral part of the plot. Bollywood does not encompass all of Indian cinema, contributing only about 20% of the total film output of India, which is the largest in the world and which predates Bollywood (Ganti 3). It is not one genre of film but is a film industry in which there are many genres.
The Bollywood movie industry is by far one of the largest film industries in the world. On an average, it produces more than 800 feature films and over one thousand short films annually. Producers love making Bollywood movies simply because there are millions of millions of movie enthusiasts in India. Movie tickets here are the cheapest in the world. As demand and popularity of Bollywood movies grow within India and internationally, Bollywood production companies have increased their production spending to keep pace with the demands from the audience for better movies with more special effects and more exotic locations.
The characteristics that came to define Bollywood also gave it a quality of nationalism: of representing India as a whole and not speaking to just one religious group, language, geographical area, or caste (as unrealistic as that may be). One of these characteristics was the choice, early on, to use the Hindi language as the language of Bollywood films. Hundreds of languages are spoken in India, and Hindi was not even one of the common ones in Bombay at the time talking films arose. Hindi was chosen because it was common as a trade language; most people knew some of it or could understand it because it was similar to their own dialect. When Hindi became the national language years later, this only increased the sense of nationalism in film.
Bollywood movies integrate their culture in every film. Indian films have a number of scenes displaying folk songs and dances that are incorporated in the movie's storyline.
Over the years, Bollywood movies went under major transformation and have also undergone a number of changes and improvements. Because of the rise and popularity of Hollywood movies, Indian films also adopt some of the trends similar to western films. This is evident in some movie scripts where the English language is sometimes used. The plots used in some Bollywood movies are also patterned in western style of scriptwriting. And mostly recently Bollywood has also started to release movies on the high definition video known as BlueRay to keep pace with the technology.
Awards ceremonies such as Filmfare Awards, IIFA Awards, and Zee Cine Awards, are held every year to recognize the contributions of movie director, cast, music director, playback singer, actors and all who are involved in the making of the movie.
Sources:
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