Etymology[edit]

Tollywood was the very first Hollywood-inspired name, dating back to a 1932 article in the American
Cinematographer by Wilford E. Deming, an American engineer who was involved in the production
of the first Indian sound film. He gave the industry the name Tollywood because
the Tollygunge district in which it was based rhymed with "Hollywood", and because Tollygunge was
the center of the cinema of India as a whole at the time much like Hollywood was in the cinema of
the United States.[4]
In that same March 1932 article, Deming was also considering the name "Hollygunge" but decided
to go with "Tollywood" as the nickname for the Tollygunge area due to "Tolly being a proper name
and Gunge meaning locality" in the Bengali language. It was this "chance juxtaposition of two pairs
of rhyming syllables," Holly and Tolly, that led to the name "Tollywood" being coined. The name
"Tollywood" went on to be used as a nickname for the Bengali film industry by the popular Kolkata-
based Junior Statesman youth magazine, establishing a precedent for other film industries to use
similar-sounding names.[25] Tollywood later went on to inspire the name "Bollywood" (as the Bombay-
based industry overtook the one in Tollygunge), which in turn inspired many other similar names.[4][25]

History[edit]

A scene from Dena Paona, 1931, the first Bengali talkie

The history of cinema in Bengal dates to the 1920s, when the first "bioscopes" were shown in
theatres in Calcutta. Within a decade, the first seeds of the industry were sown by Hiralal Sen,
considered a stalwart of Victorian era cinema[26] when he set up the Royal Bioscope Company,
producing scenes from the stage productions of a number of popular shows [26] at the Star
Theatre, Minerva Theatre, Classic Theatre. Following a long gap after Sen's works,[27] Dhirendra Nath
Ganguly (known as D.G.) established the Indo British Film Co, the first Bengali-owned production
company, in 1918. However, the first Bengali feature film, Billwamangal, was produced in 1919,
under the banner of Madan Theatre. Bilat Ferat was the IBFC's first production in 1921. The Madan
Theatre production of Jamai Shashthi was the first Bengali talkie.[28] A long history has been
traversed since then, with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak and others
earning international acclaim and securing their place in the movie history.