Tamil cinema (Tamil: தமிழ் சினிமா) is the Tamil language film-making industry, based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It is based in the Kodambakkam area of Chennai, where Tamil language feature films are produced, which has led to a reference to the district and industry as Kollywood (Tamil: கோலிவுட் kōlivūṭ), a portmanteau of the words Kodambakkam and Hollywood. Tamil cinema is known for being India's second largest film industry in terms of revenue and worldwide distribution[1][2] with its main audiences being people of the four southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andra Pradesh, and Karnataka.
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Silent movies were produced in Chennai since 1916 and the era of talkies dawned in 1931 with the film Kalidas. By the end of the 1930s, the State of Madras legislature passed the Entertainment Tax Act 1939. Tamil Nadu cinema has had a profound effect on the film making industries of India, with Chennai becoming a hub for the film-making industries of other languages, including Telugu cinema, Malayalam cinema, Kannada cinema, Hindi cinema, Sinhalese cinema and Sri Lankan Tamil cinema in the 1900s, and today includes post-production services for Bollywood.[3] Tamil–language films are further made in other countries.
Today, Tamil films are distributed to various overseas theatres in Asia and North America, including Japan and South Korea where they have large audiences; as well as Southern Africa, Western Europe, and other significant Tamil diaspora regions including the middle east countries. From the 1990s, Tamil films have been made in Canada based in the Southern Ontario in the Greater Toronto Area as well as in Sri Lanka and Malaysia where Tamil is one of the official languages.
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Etymology
The term 'Kollywood' has evolved from the two words 'Kodambakkam' and 'Hollywood' which is the name often used for American film industry. But the reason Kollywood is different from Hollywood is that Hollywood is actually a physical place which exists in the USA after which the film Industry was named.
The term Kollywood dates back to the 1950-80's when the term began to be widely used for describing Tamil cinema, the age when the term Bollywood was also starting to be used widely. It is an unknown fact of who first used this word even though many sources assign the credit of using the word to many places. But Kollywood was inspired only after Hindi Cinema started using the word Bollywood. The word 'Kollywood' later was being used by many people to depict the Tamil Film Industry which became India's second largest film Industry generating enormous amounts of revenue.
History
A scene from the Tamil movie Chandralekha released in 1948.
A visiting European exhibitor first screened (date unknown) a selection of silent short films at the Victoria Public Hall in Madras. The films all featured non-fictional subjects; they were mostly photographed records of day-to-day events..
Early exhibitors
In Madras (now known as Chennai), the Electric Theatre was established for the screening of silent films. It was a favourite haunt of the British community in Madras. The theatre was shut down after a few years. This building is now part of a post office complex on Anna Salai (Mount Road). The Lyric Theatre was also built in the Mount Road area. This venue boasted a variety of events, including plays in English, Western classical music concerts, and ballroom dances. Silent films were also screened as an additional attraction. Samikannu Vincent, an employee of the South Indian Railways in Trichy, purchased a film projector and silent films from the Frenchman Du Pont and set up a business as film exhibitor. He erected tents for screening films. His tent cinema became popular and he travelled all over the state with his mobile unit. In later years, he produced talkies and also built a cinema in Coimbatore.
To celebrate the event of King George V's visit in 1909, a grand exhibition was organised in Madras. Its major attraction was the screening of short films accompanied by sound. A British company imported a Crone megaphone, made up of a film projector to which a gramophone with a disc containing prerecorded sound was linked, and both were run in unison, producing picture and sound simultaneously. However, there was no synched dialogue. Raghupathy Venkiah Naidu, a successful photographer, took over the equipment after the exhibition and set up a tent cinema near the Madras High Court. R. Venkiah, flush with funds, built in 1912 a permanent cinema in the Mount Road area named Gaiety Theatre. It was the first in Madras to screen films on a full-time basis. This theatre is still functioning, although under different ownership.
In tent cinemas, there were usually three classes of tickets: the floor, bench and, chair. The floor-ticket purchaser sat on sand to watch the movie, but he enjoyed certain advantages that other patrons did not. He could sit as he pleased, or he could turn over and take a short nap when the narrative was particularly dull and roll back again when the action was again to his liking—luxuries in which the upper class could never indulge.
Impacts for Tamil cinema
The Tamil Cinema has been impacted by many factors due to which it has become the second largest film industry of India. The main impacts of the early cinema were the cultural influences of the country. Tamil was a language which was nearly as ancient as Sanskrit and many plays and stories which were written using rich Sanskrit present in the ages as early as the Cholas. They were highly stylized and nature of the spectacle was one which could attract the people. Along with this, music and dance were one of the main entertainment sources.
The Bharata Natyam dance was the oldest dance of India and so impacted the cultural heritage to a very great extent. The word Natyam was derived from the Sanskrit word Nrit, meaning to Dance. Usually the kings sitting in the court were seen admiring dancers, and enjoying the music and dance along with the courtiers. These kind of themes were commonly found in the movies. The theory of rasa dating back to ancient Sanskrit drama is believed to be one of the most fundamental features that differentiate Indian cinema.
Along with the music and dance of ancient India, the novels and books written by many authors were used for making the movies and sometimes, the entire story was adopted from the book alone and made into films. The ancient Indian epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana which have exerted a profound influence on the thought and imagination of popular Indian 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 which were common in the early Tamil cinema.[4]
The American film Industry, commonly known as Hollywood, where musicals were popular from the 1920s to the 1950s, though Indian filmmakers departed from their Hollywood counterparts in several ways. "For example, the Hollywood musicals had as their plot the world of entertainment itself. Indian filmmakers, while enhancing the elements of fantasy so pervasive in Indian popular films, used song and music as a natural mode of articulation in a given situation in their films. There is a strong Indian tradition of narrating mythology, history, fairy stories and so on through song and dance." In addition, "whereas Hollywood filmmakers strove to conceal the constructed nature of their work so that the realistic narrative was wholly dominant, Indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction. However, they demonstrated how this creation intersected with people's day to day lives in complex and interesting ways. The basics of film making were adopted from the Hollywood industry and Indian cinema could not be imagined without the American Cinema.[5]
Film studios
AVM studios in Chennai
The year 1916 marked the birth of Tamil cinema with the first Madras production and South Indian film release Keechaka Vaadham (The Destruction of Keechaka).[6] During the 1920s, silent Tamil-language movies were shot at makeshift locations in and around Chennai, and for technical processing, they were sent to Pune or Calcutta. Later some movies featuring M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar were shot in Pune and Calcutta. In the 1930s AVM set up its makeshift studio in the town of Karaikudi, and during the same decade, full-fledged Movie studios were built in Salem (Modern Theatres Studio) and Coimbatore (Central Studios, Neptune, and Pakshiraja). By the mid 1940s, Chennai became the hub of Studio activity with two more movie Studios built in Chennai, Vijaya Vauhini Studios and Gemini Studios. Later, AVM Studios shifted its operations to Chennai. Thus, with the undivided Madras Presidency being the Capital to most of South India, Chennai became the center for Tamil- and Telugu-language movies. Also, most of the pre-independence era drama and stage actors joined the movie industry from the 1940s, and Chennai became the hub for South Indian–language film production and Sri Lankan cinema before independence.
Film making process
Once the producer has made the necessary arrangements for the finance of the movie, the production can start. The extras and the dance troupes are generally paid on a daily basis. The cameramen, technicians and other members of the film crew operate on contractual basis. The star cast of the movie generally accepts a staggered payment schedule basis spread over the course of the completion of the movie.[7]
After the production is complete, which might also include outstation shooting, the film is edited and dubbed. Editing and dubbing require specialized skills and equipment which are available on a restricted scale in India. After the film is edited and dubbed, it is submitted to the Central Board of Film Certifications (CBFC) for certification. The members of the CBFC, after a series of private screenings, may suggest alterations in the film. Upon such alterations being carried out, the film is ready for release.
The timing of the release of a film is normally determined after considering factors such as festivals, examinations, cricket matches, etc. The release of a film is also generally timed to avoid confrontation with any other film from a rival banner.
Cast and crew
The Tamil film industry employs a variety of people for portraying different characters and roles. The Tamil cast and crew are a mixture from all over India. Tamil Cinema has attracted major actors and actresses along with other supporting actors who play a major role in films, who become hopeful of getting a break. Models and beauty contestants, television actors, theatre actors and even common people come to the industry to gain popularity and for showering entertainment to the people. There have been large number of films from the Tamil Cinema which have been shot in a variety of different places outside India. So, different people from other countries are employed to act in the films where most of them till date have been hits.
Many foreign actors who mostly act for supporting roles are successful in the industry, as it offers a wide range of roles from villains to fathers. The roles are made in such a way that it satisfies the person who plays it and it is appreciated by the people who play a major role in judgement of the film. There have been many blockbusters compared to failures in this industry where foreign artists are portrayed.
The status or position of a performer acknowledged to be a star, commonly referred to as Stardom is a bit volatile, which makes the actor or actress to choose the scripts carefully, failing which their status in the industry rapidly rises and falls.
Multi-starrer films, which are films having more than one major hero, are not very common in Tamil Cinema though however two major stars Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan have acted in quite a lot of films in their early careers. The Vijay-Suriya starrer films, Nerukku Ner and Friends were well received and appreciated by the people. Between the period of 2005 and 2010, lots of multi-starrer films were coming from different directors and most of them were successful. Often, extreme hard work is put by the crew members who are one of the major reasons for the film's success.
The Tamil industry's crew and the relatives of film-industry insiders have an edge in getting coveted roles in films or being part of a film's crew. Industry connections are no guarantee of a long career: competition is fierce and if film industry scions do not succeed at the box office, their careers will falter.