The Indian film industry is huge. I think back in the ‘90s they said that India release around a 1000 movies a year. I’ve seen figures online (unverified) saying that the figure was at around 1900+ before the lockdown.

Most people think that Indian cinema is just Bollywood/Hindi movies. But there are a lot of other regional movie industries such as Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Punjabi, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati etc. Each of these languages/sectors have their own vibe/feel.

I started my Indian film journey as a child with Tamil and Hindi movies. Then I kind of dropped out of Hindi movies for a while since I didn’t understand the language, but in my 20’s I learnt Hindi and got back into watching Hindi movies.

Back in the ‘90s Bollywood was all about romantic movies — it was boy-meets-girl all the time. And I loved it! They had love stories happening in all sorts of places and under all sorts of circumstances. It might have been a single theme, but I personally enjoyed it a lot since it was an escape from daily life into a magical world where things just worked out in the end.

These days though, Hindi cinema seems to be kind of in limbo. I hardly ever see any more love stories. It seems to be mostly movies trying to be Hollywood blockbusters and not quite succeeding. You have the huge budgets, the stars, and the glitz and glamour, but they don’t seem to be able to make things believable/likeable.

Tamil cinema too has undergone its one metamorphosis but in a different direction. Back in the day it used to be a mix of love stories, action movies, and some very-down-to-earth stories about life and people. These days, it seems that the thoughtful stories are less common and you get a lot of hyper-violent action movies or revenge/political dramas. Of all the Indian movies we watch, my wife generally does not want to watch Tamil movies because of the level of violence.

I got into Telugu movies late — probably about 5 - 6 years ago? But they seem to be where Hindi and Tamil movies were at one time. They have action, love stories, and the colourful scenes that makes Indian cinema so interesting. Telugu is probably my most favourite Indian cinema language at the moment for sheer entertainment value. Of course, Telugu cinema isn’t without its own share of issues. Especially with older movies, you see a lot of subtle/casual misogyny. Without going into deeper issues, in the older movies the way the protagonist expresses love is usually by teasing/harassing the object of his affection — which seems rather problematic on so many levels.

But on a positive note, haven’t seen movies like that from Telugu cinema recently. In fact, I’ve seen some very interesting love stories where the characters behave in unexpected ways. So yeah, Telugu cinema is changing too and is one of my favourites at the moment.

Then there’s Malayalam. I’ve watched Malayalam movies on and off since the language is close enough to Tamil that I can understand at least some of it. And with the advent of subtitles, it becomes even easier to understand what is going on 🙂

With very few exceptions, every Malayalam movie I’ve seen has impressed me in some way. Back in the day, Malayalam movies used to be slow though. The stories were good but the build up was slow and it took a while for you to really get into the story. But that too is changing and the newer Malayalam movies seem to tell stories at very different paces and some are so fast moving that I’d sit at the edge of my seat waiting to see what happened next. But they all retain that old ability to be thought-provoking in some way, no matter what.

And that’s just four of the wide variety of Indian movie sectors/languages. There are so many more, each with their own flavour. So if you’re a cinema buff, you owe it to yourself to try out some and see if you find something that you really like …

#Movies #IndianCinema #Hindi #Tamil #Telugu #Malayalam #Bollywood #Kollywood #Tollywood #Mollywood