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Concept
Tamil cinema
Summary
Tamil cinema is a part of Indian cinema that produces motion pictures for Tamil audiences in the Tamil language. Based out of the Kodambakkam neighbourhood in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, it is nicknamed Kollywood, a portmanteau of the names Kodambakkam and Hollywood. The first Tamil silent film, Keechaka Vadham, was directed by R. Nataraja Mudaliar in 1918. The first Tamil talking feature film, Kalidas, a multilingual directed by H. M. Reddy was released on 31 October 1931, less than seven months after India's first talking motion picture Alam Ara.
By the end of the 1930s, the legislature of the State of Madras passed the Entertainment Tax Act of 1939. Tamil film industry established itself in Madras (now Chennai), which also became a secondary hub for the Bombay-based Hindi cinema, and a primary hub for other South Indian film industries and Sri Lankan cinema. Over the last quarter of the 20th century, Tamil films established a global presence. While enjoying strong box office collections in the Tamil-speaking nations of Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia, Tamil films are also distributed throughout the Middle East, Oceania, Europe, North America, parts of Africa, and Japan. The industry also inspired independent filmmaking among Tamil diaspora populations in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, and the West.
M. Edwards first screened a selection of silent films at the Victoria Public Hall in Madras in 1897 during the British Raj. The selected films all featured non-fictional subjects; they were mostly photographed records of day-to-day events. The film scholar Stephen Hughes points out that within a few years there were regular ticketed shows in a hall in Pophams Broadway, started by one Mrs. Klug, but this lasted only for a few months. Once it was demonstrated as a commercial proposition, a Western entrepreneur, Warwick Major, built the first cinema theatre, the Electric Theatre, which still stands. It was a favourite haunt of the British community in Madras. The theatre was shut down after a few years.
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