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Introduction
Tamil cinema (also referred to as the cinema of Tamil Nadu, the Tamil film industry, or Chennai film industry) is the Chennai–based Tamil language filmmaking industry of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is based in the Kodambakkam district of Chennai, where several Tamil language feature films are produced, which has led to a colloquial reference to the district and industry as Kollywood, a portmanteau of the words Kodambakkam and Hollywood.
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 filmmaking industries of other languages, including Telugu cinema, Malayalam cinema, Kannada cinema, Hindi cinema, Sinhalese cinema and Sri Lankan Tamil cinema in the 1900s. Tamil–language films are further made in other countries.
Today, Tamil films are distributed to various theatres around the world such as in Sri Lanka, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, South Africa, Western Europe, North America, and other significant Tamil diaspora regions.
History
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[disambiguation needed] 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 organized 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. 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.
Film Studios
1916 marked the birth of Tamil cinema with the first Madras production and South Indian film release Keechaka Vaadham (The Destruction of Keechaka). 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 notable 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 Music
Ilaiyaraaja and A. R. Rahman are music directors from the Chennai film industry and have an international following. Other prominent Tamil film score and soundtrack composers in the industry include Yuvan Shankar Raja, Harris Jayaraj, Karthik Raja and Vidyasagar. Several international composers have used Chennai's studios to record music for projects, as have composers from other film industries. S. Rajeswara Rao was based in Chennai from the 1940s. During the 2000's film composer M. S. Viswanathan was popular, with interest in Tamil film songs being re-ignited with the audio revolution.
Politics
The Tamil film industry has a long intertwining link with politics, dating from the earliest days of regional cinema, where stories, themes and characters derived from Tamil traditional folk ballads have inspired screenplays and have become vehicles for creating future politicians. The first non congress Chief Minister C. N. Annadurai and the current Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi were directors and script writers. M. G. Ramachandran, who was a commercial film actor, had served as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for more than a decade. The current opposition leader J. Jayalalithaa was also an actress. Actor Neapoleon and J.K. Riteesh are elected as a member of parliament(MP).And current members of legislative assembly(MLA) of Tamil Nadu includes Vijayakanth and S.Ve.Sekar.
Distribution and Popularity
Tamil films constitute India's most popular films along with Tollywood and Bollywood films. They have one of the widest overseas distribution, with large audience turnout from the Tamil diaspora alongside Hindi films. The Chennai film industry produced the first commercially successful film across India in 1948 with Chandralekha, a landmark film in Tamil cinema. Tamil films have enjoyed consistent popularity among populations in India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia. They have recently become popular in Japan (particularly Muthu, directed by K. S. Ravikumar, and Indira, directed by Suhasini Mani Ratnam), South Africa, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Sivaji: The Boss (2007) had been touted as a record-breaking film for its high-budget, large opening, and reception worldwide. It also cracked into the United Kingdom's and South Africa's top-ten high-grossing films during the week of its release. Ayngaran International distributes a majority of Tamil films overseas while domestic distributors such as Aascar Films, Pyramid Saimira, and Madras Talkies handle distribution within India. The Kamal Haasan starrer Dasavathaaram was distributed by Walt Disney Pictures in Canada.
Many Tamil-language films have premiered or have been selected as special presentations at various prestigious film festivals across the world, such as Mani Ratnam's Kannathil Muthamittal, Veyyil and Ameer Sultan's Paruthiveeran. More recently, Kanchivaram, directed by Priyadarshan, had been selected to be premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Films like Thevar Magan, Indian and Jeans had been selected by India for Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards. Mani Ratnam's Nayagan (1987) was included in Time magazine's "All-TIME" 100 best movies list.
Tamil films enjoy significant patronage in neighbouring Indian states like Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In Kerala and Karnataka the films are directly released in Tamil but in Andhra Pradesh they are generally dubbed into Telugu. There is a fair amount of dispersion amongst the Indian film industries. Many successful Tamil films have been remade by the Hindi and Telugu film industries. It is estimated by the Manorama Yearbook 2000 (a popular almanac) that over 5,000 Tamil films were produced in the 20th century. Tamil films have also been dubbed into other languages, thus reaching a much wider audience. Examples of those dubbed into Hindi include such hits as Anniyan directed by S. Shankar, Minsaara Kanavu directed by Rajiv Menon, Roja and Bombay directed by Mani Ratnam.
Tamil language films are produced in other cinema hubs. The film My Magic directed by Singaporean Eric Khoo became Singapore's first film to be nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. There has been a growing presence of English in dialogue and songs in Chennai films. It is not uncommon to see movies that feature dialogue studded with English words and phrases, or even whole sentences. Some movies are also simultaneously made in two or three languages (either using subtitles or several soundtracks). Chennai's film composers have popularised their highly unique, syncretic style of film music across the world. Quite often, Tamil movies feature Madras Tamil, a colloquial version of Tamil spoken in Chennai.
Actors
At the beginning of the talkie era, Tamil cinema was dominated by P. U. Chinnappa and M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar up until the end of the 1940s. From the 1950s to the late 1970s, the two highly anticipated Tamil film stars were M. G. Ramachandran and Sivaji Ganesan. Present-day dominators are Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, who have been lead-acting in the industry since the mid-1970s. Though it is debatable, successors to the two are currently considered to be actors Joseph Vijay and Ajith Kumar.
However, such importance to star-value has started to become unused while film distributors in Tamil Nadu have begun using the term "minimum-guaruntee" to label film stars. The term is applied to actors whose films have been statistically determined to be higher grossers in box-offices than others, regardless of critical reception. Arguably, current minimum-guaruntee actors are determined to be Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Joseph Vijay, Ajith Kumar Surya Sivakumar, Vikram, R. Madhavan, Silambarasan Rajendar and Dhanush.
Union Associations
The industry includes several groups who organize their own events based on different issues of major concern. Rather than forming separate and distinct groups, each association occasionally collaborate for certain events. These associations are based on profession in the industry, such as a directors' association or producers' association.
The most notable association is the South Indian Film Artistes' Association which is a group of all prominent Tamil film actors. Formed in 1952 under the leadership of actor Sivaji Ganesan, the association has continued to conduct several protests and hunger strikes for certain political and humanitarian issues, in efforts to make positive changes in the Indian and Tamil society. Specifically, they govern film or media-related problems or conflicts that may arise to its members. The current president of the association is the actor-turned-politician R. Sarath Kumar.
Other associations include the Association of Tamil Film Directors which is headed by director Bharathiraja and the Tamil Film Producers' Council, headed by film producer Rama Narayanan, who often meet to make cinema-related decisions. A more general association that incorporates all kinds of film personalities (actors, directors, producers, cinematographers, composers, etc.) include the well known Film Employees' Federation of South India (FEFSI). They often successfully pledge for the welfare of low-income film workers, such as lighting technicians and stunt coordinators.
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