Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based film industry in India.

Related Topics:
Mumbai - Film industry - India

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The name is a conflation of Bombay, the old name of Mumbai, and Hollywood, the center of the United States film industry. Though some purists deplore the name (they say it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood), it seems likely to persist and even has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Related Topics:
Mumbai - Hollywood - United States - Oxford English Dictionary

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

Related Topics:
Hindi - Urdu - Hindustani - English

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Bollywood and the other major cinematic hubs (Tamil - Kollywood, Telugu - Tollywood, Bengali, 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. 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.

Related Topics:
Tamil - Kollywood - Telugu - Tollywood - Bengali - Kannada - Malayalam - Indian film industry - Film - Indian subcontinent - Middle East - Africa - Southeast Asia - South Asia - Diaspora

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