La Poste

After the government, La Poste is the second biggest employer in France. For lists of the best, consult the various web sites devoted to Bollywood, where critics list their choices or readers vote for their favorites. In addition to postal services, it also offers banking services and, via Chronopost, courier services. Popularity is less open to debate. It also operates the postal service in Monaco, while in Andorra, it operates postal services alongside those of Spain. These are not necessarily the best films produced by Bollywood; even attempting to make a list of the 'best' would be controversial. La Poste postage stamps are valid for use in the Overseas Departments, but not in the Territorial Collectivities, which issue their own stamps, separate from metropolitan France. Foreigners interested in sampling Indian cinema may wish to consult this List of popular Bollywood films.

La Poste is the mail service of France, which also operates postal services in the French Overseas Departments of Réunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana, and the territorial collectivities of Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Mayotte. However, filmmakers may be moving towards accepting some box-office segmentation, between films that appeal to rural Indians, and films that appeal to urban and overseas audiences. It was believed that aiming for a broad spectrum would maximize box office receipts. The Indian film industry has preferred films that appeal to all segments of the audience (see below), and has resisted making films that target narrow audiences. In the early 1990s, the pendulum swung back towards family-centric romantic musicals with the success of such films as Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995).

Amitabh Bachchan, the star known for his "angry young man" roles, rode the crest of this trend. In the 1970s and 1980s, romantic confections made way for gritty, violent, films about gangsters and bandits. Lavish romantic musicals and melodramas were the staple fare at the cinema. In the late 1950s, Bollywood films moved from black-and-white to color.

Most Bollywood films were unabashedly escapist, but there were also a number of filmmakers who tackled tough social issues, or used the struggle for Indian independence as a backdrop for their plots. The 1930s and 1940s were tumultuous times: India was buffeted by the Great Depression, World War II, the Indian independence movement, and the violence of the Partition. There was clearly a huge market for talkies and musicals; Bollywood and all the regional film industries quickly switched to sound filming. The first Indian sound film, Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931), was a super hit.

By the 1930s, the industry was producing over 200 films per annum. The movie industry was well established by 1920, producing an average of 27 films every year. The first indigenous silent feature film was Raja Harishchandra, released in 1913 and directed by Dadasaheb Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who is considered the father of Indian cinema. Following this, there were several attempts to film staged plays and imported films were shown in the first decade of the 20th century.

Three years later, Harishchandra Bhatvadekar shot and exhibited two short films. Cinema first came to India in 1896, when the Lumiere Brothers’ Cinematographe showed six short films in the Watson Hotel. These awards are handed out at an annual ceremony presided over by the President of India. The DFF screens not only Bollywood films, but films from all the other regional movie industries and independent/art films.

Since 1973, the Indian government has sponsored the National Film Awards, awarded by the government run Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF). Most of these award ceremonies are lavishly staged spectacles, featuring singing, dancing, and lots of stars and starlets. Some of the other popular awards are:. Lately, other companies, such as Stardust Magazine, Zee TV, etc have joined the movie award bandwagon.

Like the Oscars, they are frequently accused of bias towards commercial success, rather than artistic merit. However, unlike the Oscars, voting is not restricted to members of a specific club or academy, but is open to all people. Modeled after the poll-based merit format of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, individuals may submit their votes in seperate categories; The awards are presented at a glamorous, star-studded ceremony. The Indian screen magazine Filmfare started the first Filmfare Awards in 1953.

Surprisingly, the exposé resulted in insignificant public outrage. Those accused by the show vehemently denied these accusations, and most of the Bollywood establishment have supported them. This ploy would not be, of course, unique to Bollywood moguls; film industry figures worldwide have long been rumored to subject actresses to the casting couch. In 2005, the India's Most Wanted show on India TV ran an exposé that accused several Bollywood figures (including Shakti Kapoor and Aman Verma) of seeking sexual favors from young actresses.

Blatant plagiarism may have diminished -- however, there is no general agreement that it has. While copyright enforcement in South Asia is still hit or miss, Bollywood and Hollywood are much more aware of each other now, and Indian audiences are more familiar with foreign movies and music. Audiences also may not have been aware of the plagiarism, since many in the Indian audience were unfamiliar with Western films and tunes. As for the Western sources, the Bollywood film industry was largely unknown to Westerners, who would not even be aware that their material was being copied.

Copyright enforcement was lax in South Asia. In past times, this could be done with impunity. They copy ideas, plot lines, tunes or riffs from sources close at hand (Pakistani [3] and Tamil films and songs) or far away (Hollywood and other Western movies, Western pop hits). Constrained by rushed production schedules and small budgets, some Bollywood writers and musicians have been known to resort to plagiarism.

The old hand-painted posters, once regarded as ephemera, are becoming increasingly collectible as folk art. Now, the majority of the huge and ubiquitous billboards in India's major cities are created with computer-printed vinyl. Human labor was cheaper than printing and distributing publicity material. Many Indian artists used to make a living hand-painting movie billboards and posters.

Bollywood sold 3.6 billion tickets and had total revenues (theater tickets, DVDs, television etc) of US$1.3 billion (USD), whereas Hollywood films sold 2.6 billion tickets and generated total revenues (again from all formats) of US$51 billion. It shows tickets sold in 2002 and total revenue estimates. For an interesting comparison of Hollywood and Bollywood financial figures, see this chart: [2]. 'Foreign' audiences—in Asian and Western countries—are also growing, if more slowly.

As more Indians migrate to these countries, they form a growing market for upscale Indian films. Balanced against this are the increasing returns from theatres in Western countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, where Bollywood is slowly getting noticed. In the past, most Bollywood films could make money; now fewer tend to do so. Satellite TV, television and imported foreign films are making huge inroads into the domestic Indian entertainment market.

The availability of illegal copies of movies on the Internet also contributes to the piracy problem. regularly stock tapes and DVDs of dubious provenance, while consumer copying adds to the problem. and the U.K. Small convenience stores run by members of the Indian diaspora in the U.S.

Films are frequently broadcast without compensation by countless small cable TV companies in India and other parts of South Asia. (In fact, bootleg copies are the only way people in Pakistan can watch Bollywood movies, since the Government of Pakistan has banned their sale, distribution and telecast). Besides catering to the homegrown market, demand for these copies is large amongst some sections of the Indian diaspora, too. Manufacturing of bootleg DVD, VCD, and VHS copies of the latest movie titles is a well established 'small scale industry' in parts of the Indian Subcontinent and South East Asia.

Often, bootleg DVD copies of movies are available before the prints are official released in movie theaters. Another problem facing Bollywood is widespread copyright infringement of its films. In 2001, the Central Bureau of Investigation seized all prints of the movie Chori Chori Chupke Chupke after the movie was found to be funded by members of the Mumbai underworld. In January, 2000, Mumbai mafia hitmen shot Rakesh Roshan, film director and father of star Hrithik Roshan; It had been reported that he had rebuffed mob attempts to meddle with his film distribution.

The Mumbai underworld has been known to be involved in the production of several films, and are notorious for their patronization of several prominent film personalities; On occasion, they have known to use money and muscle power to get their way in cinematic deals. As finances are not regulated, some funding also comes from illegitimate sources, such as the Mumbai underworld. However, this ban has now been lifted [1]. Indian banks and financial institutions were forbidden from lending money to movie studios.

Funding for Bollywood films often comes from private distributors and a few large studios. Nowadays, Indian producers are drawing in more and more funding for big-budget films shot within India as well, such as Lagaan, Devdas, and the recent production The Rising. Sequences shot overseas have proved a real box office draw, so Mumbai film crews are increasingly filming in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, continental Europe and elsewhere. But as Western films and television gain wider distribution in India itself, there is increasing pressure for Bollywood films to attain the same production levels.

Sets, costumes, special effects, and cinematography were less than world-class up until the mid-to-late 1990s. Bollywood budgets are usually modest by Hollywood standards. Notable film clans:. Some of the biggest stars, such as Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, and Shah Rukh Khan, have succeeded despite total lack of show biz connections.

However, industry connections are no guarantee of a long career: competition is brutal and if film industry scions don't succeed at the box office, their careers will falter. Bollywood can be clannish, and the relatives of film-industry insiders have an edge in getting coveted roles. Hence many stars make the most of their fame, once they become popular, by making several movies simultaneously. Directors compete to hire the most popular stars of the day, who are believed to guarantee the success of a movie (though this belief is not always supported by box-office results).

Very few people become national icons, who are unaffected by success or failure of their movies, like Amitabh Bachchan. The popularity of the stars can rise and fall rapidly, based on single movies. Stardom in the entertainment industry is very fickle, and Bollywood is no exception. Just as in Hollywood, very few succeed.

Models and beauty contestants, television actors, theatre actors and even common people come to Mumbai with the hope and dream of becoming a star. It attracts thousands of aspiring actors and actresses, all hoping for a break in the industry. Bollywood employs people from all parts of India. Many lyrics compare the singer to a devotee and the object of his or her passion to Krishna or Radha.

Another source for love lyrics is the long Hindu tradition of poetry about the mythological amours of Krishna, Radha, and the gopis. Here's a sample from the 1983 film Hero, written by the great lyricist Anand Bakshi:. Bollywood song lyrics, especially in the old movies, frequently use Urdu or Hindustani vocabulary which has many elegant and poetic Arabic and Persian loan-words. Song lyrics are usually about love.

This phenomenon is not unlike the pairings of American composers and songwriters that created old-time Broadway musicals (e.g., Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, or Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe). Music directors often prefer working with certain lyricists, to the point that the lyricist and composer are seen as a team. As an example, below is a dialogue from the 1975 film Deewar, between the gangster brother Vijay and his policeman brother Ravi:. Dialogues are often melodramatic and invoke God, family, mother, duty, and self-sacrifice liberally.

Contemporary mainstream movies also make great use of English. The dialogues are mostly written in Hindi, with use of Urdu in situations which require poetic dialogues. The film script (frequently credited as "dialogues") and the song lyrics are often written by different people. In this case, the event is almost always two characters' falling in love.

Sometimes, a song is worked into the plot, so that a character has a reason to sing; other times, a song is an externalization of a character's thoughts, or presages an event that has not occurred yet in the plot of the movie. Songs typically comment on the action taking place in the movie, in several ways. Though considered by many to be one of India's most beautiful regions, Kashmir has been generally off-limits for quite some time due to violence. Switzerland has become a popular setting for these picturisations, largely because its Alpine valleys are reminiscent of Kashmir.

This staging is referred to as a picturisation. If the hero and heroine dance and sing a pas-de-deux (a dance and ballet term, meaning "dance of two"), it is often staged in beautiful natural surroundings or architecturally grand settings. The hero or heroine will often perform with a troupe of supporting dancers, usually of the same sex. In modern films, Indian dance elements often blend with Western dance styles (as seen on MTV or in Broadway musicals), though it is not unusual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film.

The dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily modeled on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans (tawaif), or folk dances. Their songs can make or break a film and usually do. The composers of film music, known as music directors, are also well-known. Most of the female songs in films from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were sung by Lata.

One of the most recorded of these playback singers is Lata Mangeshkar who, through the course a career spanning over six decades, has recorded thousands of songs for Indian movies. Playback singers are prominently featured in the opening credits and have their own fans who will go to an otherwise lackluster movie just to hear their favourites. These forays, while well-received at the time, have not led to real singing careers for either actor. Of late, a few actors have again tried singing for themselves:.

Saigal, Suraiyya and Noor Jehan were also known as both singers and actors. L. K. One notable exception was Kishore Kumar, who starred in several major films in the 1950s while also having a stellar career as a playback singer.

While most actors, especially today, are excellent dancers, few are also singers. Songs from Bollywood movies are generally pre-recorded by professional playback singers, with the actors then lip synching the words to the song on-screen, often while dancing. Bollywood film music is called filmi music (from Hindi, meaning "of films"). Any fan of Bollywood movies will be able to list films that he/she regards as transcending the run-of-the-mill masala movie.

It should also be said that a fair number of films with mass-appeal are either estimable simply as well-crafted amusements or even artistic achievements in their own way. There is now a significant audience of young, educated, urban Indians who want to watch Indian films, but demand a different presentation. Current films are increasingly likely either to break the mold or to ironically subvert it. However, Bollywood is changing.

They often lost out at the box office to movies with more mass appeal. There have always been Indian films with more "artistic" aims and more sophisticated stories, both inside and outside the Bollywood tradition (for example, many of the films of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Guru Dutt, Shyam Benegal, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, and Gulzar among others; see Indian art cinema). They frequently employ formulaic ingredients such as star-crossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, corrupt politicians, kidnappers, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences. Plots tend to be melodramatic.

Like masalas, these movies are a mixture of many things. Such movies are called masala movies, after the Hindi word for a spice mixture, masala. Songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills—all are mixed up in a three-hour-long extravaganza with an intermission. Indian audiences expect full value for their money, with a good entertainer generally referred to as paisa vasool, (literally, "money's worth").

However, they do not fit easily in the "musical" category as defined by Hollywood movies; they usually contain a great deal more in the way of plot and action than is found in the typical Hollywood musical. Few movies are made without at least one song-and-dance number. Most Bollywood films would be classified as musicals. .

A few movies are also made in two or even three languages (either using subtitles, or several soundtracks). It is not uncommon to see movies which feature dialogues with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. This is a political debate; see the articles on the various languages/dialects.) There has been a growing presence of English in dialogues and songs as well. (Linguists would call both Hindi and Urdu variants of Hindustani.

Bollywood is also commonly referred to as "Hindi cinema", even though use of poetic Urdu words is fairly common. Bollywood is a strong part of popular culture of not only India and the rest of the Indian subcontinent, but also of the Middle East, parts of Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and among the South Asian diaspora worldwide. Bollywood and the other major cinematic hubs (Tamil - Kollywood, Telugu - Tollywood, Bengali - also called Tollywood, Kannada, and Malayalam) constitute the broader Indian film industry, whose output is the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced and in number of tickets sold. Though some purists deplore the name (arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood), it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The name is a conflation of Bombay, the old name of Mumbai, and Hollywood, the center of the United States film industry. Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India. Apsara Awards. IIFA Awards.

Stardust awards. Star Screen Awards. Zee Cine Awards. the Mangeshkar sisters (Hridayanath Mangeshkar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Usha Mangeshkar).

the Ganguly brothers (Ashok Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Anup Kumar). the Khan-Roshan clan (Roshan, Rakesh Roshan, Rajesh Roshan, Hrithik Roshan, Suzanne Khan (Hrithik's wife), Sanjay Khan (Suzanne's father), Zayed Khan, Feroz Khan, Fardeen Khan). the Pataudis (Sharmila Tagore, Saif Ali Khan (her son), Soha Ali Khan (her daughter)). the Mukherjee-Samarth family (Shobhana Samarth, Debashree Roy, Sashadhar Mukherjee, Joy Mukherjee, Deb Mukherjee, Sharbani Mukherjee, Nutan, Tanuja, Mohnish Behl, Tanisha, Kajol, Ram Mukherjee, Rani Mukherjee).

the Khans (Salim Khan, Helen, Salman Khan, Arbaaz Khan, Sohail Khan, Malaika Arora). the Hussains (Nasir Hussain, Tahir Hussain, Aamir Khan, Mansoor Khan, Faisal Khan). the Dutts (Nargis and Sunil Dutt (wife and husband), Sunjay Dutt (their son)). the Vinod Khanna family (Vinod Khanna, Akshaye Khanna and Rahul Khanna (his sons)).

the Rajesh Khanna family (Rajesh Khanna, Dimple Kapadia (his wife), Twinkle Khanna (his daughter), Akshay Kumar (his son-in-law) and Rinke Khanna (his younger daughter)). the Bachchans (Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan). the Deols (Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Sunny Deol, Bobby Deol, Esha Deol, Abhay Deol). the Kapoors (Prithviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor, Randhir Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Rajiv Kapoor, Babita Kapoor, Neetu Singh, Karisma Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Riddhima Kapoor, Shivani Kapoor).

Aamir Khan took a turn singing "Kya Bolti Tu" in Ghulam but only because "the character had attitude that only Aamir could do justice to", according to director Vikram Bhatt. Amitabh Bachchan, sang "Mere Angane Mein" in "Lawaaris" in the mid-80's, and has also sung in "Silsila", "Mahaan" "Toofan", Baghban, and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, as well as doing a duet with Adnan Sami in the song Kabhi Nahin (Never).