FILM STUDIES ASSIGNMENT

SUBMITTED BY:
R.RAJASEKARAN
TAMIL CINEMA

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 it as Kollywood (Tamil: ோகோலிவுட் kōlivūṭ), 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 Sri Lankan 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, Malayasia, 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.

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 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. 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 music

Ilaiyaraaja and A. R. Rehman 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 1960s and 1970s, film composer M. S.
Viswanathan was popular, with interest in classic Tamil film songs being re-ignited with
the audio cassette revolution.

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.[7]

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.

Industrial trends

Annual film output in Tamil market

Average annual film output in Tamil film industry peaked in 1985.

Given below is a chart of trend of box office collections of Kollywood with figures in
millions of United States Dollars. The data excludes the market segments of in-film
advertisement, celebrity branding, mobile entertainment, stage, DVD and other
intellectual property rights.

Chandralekha produced in 1948 at a cost of almost $600,000 ($28 million in 2008 prices)
remains the most expensive Tamil film ever. The film was released in 609 screens
worldwide with subtitles.
The Tamil film market accounts for approximately 0.1% of the gross domestic product of
the state of Tamil Nadu. In the year 2007 a record 108 movies were released.[11] For the
purpose of entertainment taxes, returns have to be filed by the exhibitors weekly (usually
each Tuesday). [12] Costs of production have grown exponentially from just under Rs.40
lakhs in 1980 to over Rs.11 crores by 2005 for a typical star-studded big-budget film.
Similarly, costs of processing per print have risen from just under Rs.2,500 in 1980 to
nearly Rs.70,000 by 2005.[citation needed]

The Tamil Nadu government has made provisions for an entertainment tax exemption for
Tamil movies having pure Tamil word(s) in the title. This is in accordance with
Government Order 72 passed on July 22, 2006. The first film to be released after the new
Order was Unakkum Enakkum. The original title had been Something Something
Unakkum Ennakkum, a half-English and a half-Tamil title.