Bollywood is another name for the popular film industry base in Mumbai, India. Although some purists are very dissatisfied with this name, it seems that Bollywood will continue to be used, even in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Bollywood is also called "Indian film". In fact, Urdu poetry is quite common here, and the proportion of English dialogues and songs is increasing year by year. In many movies, there are English words and phrases, even whole sentences. Some movies have also been made into two or three language versions (with subtitles in different languages or tracks).
Bollywood and several other major film and television bases in India (Tamil-Kolywood, Telugu, Bengali)-Bollywood, Kannada and Malayalam. ) constitutes a huge film industry in India, with the number of films produced and the number of movie tickets sold ranking first in the world every year. Bollywood has an important influence on popular culture in India and even the whole Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, and spread to the whole world through the export of South Asian immigrants.
Bollywood is not in the center of Mumbai. Take a bus from Mumbai International Airport to the west. On both sides of the expressway, small shops about two meters wide are crowded shoulder to shoulder, and handwritten shop signs are scattered and overlapped. Tires hanging on the outer wall of the garage often occupy the territory of the fruit grocery store next door. The distance between the shop facade and the expressway is narrow, and people are still coming and going under the dim light. Yellow and black taxis raise dust in the hot and humid air, and the meter looks like a gas meter and hangs outside the car.
Asin Samantha, the boss of Hannah Allard Film Company who received us, left a note on the small table and made a phone call. Ten minutes later, he appeared in the hall with the screenwriter Jordin Gore.
"Where is Bollywood?" It should be my most wanted question, but I felt a little silly and asked why we were arranged to live on this beach called "Autumn Lake". Asin's answer is simple: "Because the film industry in Mumbai is here." Jordin is the kind of Indian with "eyes shining with wisdom". He was sorry to say that he couldn't accompany him the next day because he had to take part in the election. Jordin is a member of the Executive Committee of Indian Film Producers Association (IMPPA) and a candidate for the new Executive Committee.
Who first invented and used the name Bollywood? "Probably1in the mid-1980s, it began to be called out by the media. At that time, there was a growing feeling that many Hindi movies were just copies of Hollywood movies in a little disguise. Some people claim to be the founders of this word, but in fact they are just people who try their best to be famous. Many filmmakers with backbone hate this word because it implies plagiarism after all, and we prefer to use words like Mumbai film industry, Indian film industry or Hindi film industry. "
Jordin deliberately separated Hindi films from Indian films in his conversation. The annual output of Indian films exceeds that of the United States, making it the highest in the world. Not all Indian films are made in Bollywood. There are more than 200 Indian dialects, if subdivided into 1600 or so. In the complicated language environment, the composition of Indian films is also complicated.
"Mumbai produces about 130- 150 Hindi movies every year. This is similar to Hollywood-about 150 of the 600 movies in the United States every year are produced by major Hollywood companies. Hindi is the official language of India. More than 40% of India's 65.438 billion people can enjoy Hindi movies, so Hindi movies are distributed all over India. The unique position of Mumbai's film industry began in A.D. 1930, which was partly attributed to the development of Hindi. Bollywood has about 150 studios, and the film cost is generally 500,000-1 10,000 dollars. There are also more than 3 million, but it is not easy to make money. It is possible to make a profit at a cost of 2 million, and it is difficult to be higher.
"The other two dialect movies equivalent to Hindi movies are Telugu and Tamil movies. The 800-900 films produced in India each year can be divided into the following categories: Hindi 130- 140, Telugu 130- 140, Tamil120-1.
"We have so many languages. Sometimes there are good movies, others will buy scripts and make movies in other dialects. " Asin added, "60% of India's screens are concentrated in four states in southern India. The so-called' dialect movies' exceed Bollywood's film production in number, but the income at home and abroad is not as good as Bollywood. "
"Does that mean that although India shoots nearly a thousand movies every year, there may actually be only two or three hundred stories?"
"no! Only a few movies are like this, and it should be said that it does not exceed 5%. "
There are many types of Hindi movies, but almost all of them are musicals. Generally, each film has five or six songs. Before the film was released, pop songs played a very important role and promoted box office income. "By far, the most popular Indian film genre is the love story of a rich boy and a poor girl, or vice versa. After disappearing for decades, some historical and fantasy films show signs of resurgence, and the number of romantic films of youth is also increasing. People are still trying to make "Indian English" movies. Generally speaking, entertainment is the keynote of all types of movies, and the number of tragic movies has been greatly reduced. " Jordin said.