Bollywood 101: PART 1

Although I always disliked the connotation attached with the titles of the "... For Dummies" guides, I found myself almost using it for this very guide on Bollywood. Scraping that, I was going to title it Bollywood For Clueless Fans, but as you'll see further on in this article, that title was already taken.

For most people, outside of India and the NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) a.k.a. Desis (South Asian Diaspora), Bollywood is a term most are not familiar with at all. Some even are clueless in realizing that India even has their own cinema, which by the way they refer to as Indian Cinema not Bollywood in most cases, as it is not the Indian equivalent of Hollywood. The only problem with that is, Bollywood is only a part of Indian cinema ... the Mumbai-based Hindi part of the film industry. There are still other languages that Indian cinema encompasses, such as Telugu (Tollywood) Malayalam (Mollywood) Tamil and Nepali (Kollywood), Bengali (Tollywood and Dhallywood) and Sindhi (Sollywood).

According to Business Week Magazine, Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in the world, producing more than 1,000 films a year (versus Hollywood which produces a little over 700), with an audience of 3.6 billion people (2002 statistics), with Yash Raj Films being one of India's largest film producers and distributors.

Bollywood is not only recognized in the US but is rapidly gaining popularity as well. Scores of cine-goers in Africa, Asia, Canada, Europe, Oceania, Russia and South America (although not as popular here). 2006 was the most successful year ever for Hindi films in the U.S., with 7 releases grossing over $2 million. Out of the top 15 foreign-language films, 8 of them were in Hindi. One critic stated "No other language has come close to contributing so many box office hits to the list."

There are scores of official and fan sites for Bollywood actors and actresses along with those put up by the top-notch production houses, directors, cinematographers. There are official sites for the films themselves, many times interactive ones. Bollywood entertainment portals and news/gossip sites can be found by the hundreds in every language it seems. You can even find a plethora of instructional/workout DVDs on Bollywood dances. So for those of you not familiar with this amazing phenomenon, join us for a lesson in Bollywood 101.

Be on the lookout for Part 2.