Blogathon Day 3: Entertainment - Need to get Regional cinema beyond Bollywood

India is home to one of the largest film industries in the world. Every year thousands of movies are produced in India.

India is a large country where many languages are spoken. Many of the larger languages support their own film industry. Some of the popular regional film industries in India are Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, and Punjabi. The Hindi/Urdu film industry, based in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is called Bollywood.

“The major challenge that the regional cinema needs to address is of how to widen the audience base”.

Many workers from regional industries, once established, generally move to Bollywood for greater spotlight or opportunity. An interesting example of this phenomenon is the famous music director A.R. Rahman. He started his career in Tamil film industry and later moved to the Bollywood.

Bollywood movies were screened with subtitles in not only the domestic but also in the international market, the same could be done to encourage regional cinema.

Screening of regional cinema at subsidised tickets.

The government should taken measures to promote regional movies like rentals in the film city studios on discount, entertainment tax should be waved off.

It is unfair to compare Bollywood industry with regional cinema since the budgets were different. While a regional film’s budget could be between Rs 40 lakh and Rs 75 lakh, a Hindi movie’s budget could run into crores.There is a serious need for the publicity of regional cinema.

The regional film industry needs to plan for corporatisation, financing of movies, distribution and marketing of films in not only India but internationally as well.

Regional cinema industry should consider new mediums like Internet, international film festivals to reach out to newer audiences.

I believe Regional cinema are more prolific, fertile in ideas and acknowledged by world audiences, but is struggling to survive mainly because marketing is its weakest link.