Gujarati film industry

The Gujarati cinema, informally referred to as Dhollywood or Gollywood, has produced more than one thousand films since its inception. It is one of the major regional and vernacular film industries of the cinema of India associated with the Gujarati language. During the silent film era, many individuals in the industry were Gujaratis. The language-associated industry dates back to 1932, when the first Gujarati talkie, Narsinh Mehta, was released. After flourishing through the 1960s–1980s, the industry saw a decline through 2000 when the number of new films dropped below twenty. The industry has been partially revived in the 2010s due first to rural demand, and later to an influx of new technology and urban subjects in films. In 2005 the Government of Gujarat announced a 100% entertainment tax exemption for Gujarati films, and in 2016 a policy of incentives.

Bollywood, the sobriquet for the Hindi language film industry based in Mumbai (then called Bombay), inspired the nickname Dhollywood for the Gujarati film industry due to its profuse use of the dhol, a double-headed drum. It is also referred to as Gollywood, a portmanteau derived from Gujarat and Bollywood.

Even before the advent of talkies there were several silent films closely related to the Gujarati people and their culture, and many directors, producers and actors who were Gujarati and Parsi. Between 1913 and 1931 there were twenty leading film company and studios owned by Gujaratis— mostly in Bombay (now Mumbai)— and at least forty-four leading Gujarati directors.

The silent film Bilwamangal (also called Bhagat Soordas, 1919) was directed by Rustomji Dhotiwala, a Parsi Gujarati, based on a story by Gujarati writer Champshi Udeshi. This full-length (132 minutes, 12,000 feet (3,700 m)) film was produced by Elphinstone Bioscope Company of Culcutta (now Kolkata in West Bengal), and is considered Bengali. Suchet Singh established the Oriental Film Manufacturing Company of Bombay with the help of Hajimahamad Allarakha, an editor of the popular Gujarati magazine Visami Sadi, in 1919. The silent film Narsinh Mehta (1920), produced by Oriental, featured the Gujarati song "Vaishnav Jan To", which was sung by the audience and musicians in cinema halls with relevant scenes on screen.

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