What do you get when you pack an ill-fated love triangle, a conniving
villain, multiple kidnappings, and a supernatural sidekick, all into three
hours of non-stop song-and-dance? That would be a Bollywood film. Producing
over 1,000 films a year, Bollywood, the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai,
traces its history back to 1913, when Raja
Harishchandra, the first silent feature film, made its way to theatres.
Over the next few decades, Bollywood, just like its California-counterpart,
would undergo the revolutions of sound and color, culminating in the
post-independence golden age of the 1950s. While Bollywood pictures enjoy
global popularity, they are particularly well loved in Russia, where for many
years Western films were banned.
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