India is home to one of the largest film industries in the world. Every year thousands of movies are produced in India. Indian film industry comprises of Hindi films, regional movies and art cinema. The Indian film industry is supported mainly by a vast film-going Indian public, though Indian films have been gaining increasing popularity in the rest of the world, especially in countries with large numbers of emigrant Indians.
India is a large country where many languages are spoken. Many of the larger languages support their own film industry. Some of the popular regional film industries in India are Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Punjabi. The Hindi/Urdu film industry, based in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is called Bollywood. Similar neologisms have been coined for the Tamil film industry Kollywood and the Telugu film industry. Tollygunge is metonym for the Bengali film industry, long centered in the Tollygunge district of Kolkata. The Bengali language industry is notable as having nurtured the director Satyajit Ray, an internationally renowned filmmaker and a winner of many awards.
The Bollywood industry is the largest in terms of films produced and box office receipts, just as Urdu/Hindi speakers outnumber speakers of other Indian languages. Many workers in other regional industries, once established, generally move to Bollywood for greater spotlight or opportunity. An interesting example of this phenomenon is the famous music director A.R. Rahman. He started his career in Tamil film industry and later moved to the Bollywood.
