Tamil movies

Tamil cinema
The iconic globular statue of AVM Productions, the oldest surviving studio in India
No. of screens	1546 (Tamil Nadu)
Main distributors	Ayngaran International AP International Aascar Films AVM Productions Kalaipuli Films Pyramid Saimira Lyca Productions
Produced feature films (2014)
Total	326
Number of admissions (2015)
Total	100 million
Gross box office (2015)
National films	India: ₹3,750 crore (US$580 million)

Tamil cinema refers to Indian motion pictures produced in the language of Tamil. Based in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the hub of the Tamil film industry is in the Kodambakkam neighbourhood of Chennai. Kollywood is a colloquial term used to describe this industry, the word being a portmanteau of Kodambakkam and Hollywood.

The first Tamil silent film, Keechaka Vadham, was made by R. Nataraja Mudaliar in 1918. The first talking motion picture, Kalidas, was a multilingual and was released on 31 October 1931, less than seven months after India's first talking motion picture Alam Ara. By the end of the 1930s, the legislature of the State of Madras passed the Entertainment Tax Act of 1939.

Tamil cinema later had a profound effect on other filmmaking industries of India, establishing Madras (now Chennai) as a secondary hub for Hindi cinema, other South Indian film industries, as well as Sri Lankan cinema. Over the last quarter of the 20th century, Tamil films from India established a global presence through distribution to an increasing number of overseas theatres in Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Japan, the Middle East, parts of Africa, Oceania, Europe, and North America. The industry also inspired independent filmmaking in Tamil diaspora populations in Malaysia, Singapore, and the Western Hemisphere.

In 1897, M. Edwards first screened a selection of silent short films at the Victoria Public Hall in Madras. The films all featured non-fictional subjects; they were mostly photographed records of day-to-day events. The film scholar Stephen Hughes points out that within a few years there were regular ticketed shows in a hall in Pophams Broadway, started by one Mrs. Klug, but this lasted only for a few months. Once it was demonstrated as a commercial proposition, a Western entrepreneur, Warwick Major, built the first cinema theatre, the Electric Theatre, which still stands. It was a favourite haunt of the British community in Madras. The theatre was shut down after a few years. This building is now part of a post office complex on Anna Salai (Mount Road). The Lyric Theatre was also built in the Mount Road area. This venue boasted a variety of events, including plays in English, Western classical music concerts, and ballroom dances. Silent films were also screened as an additional attraction.Swamikannu Vincent, a railway draftsman from Tiruchirapalli, became a travelling exhibitor in 1905. He showed short movies in a tent in Esplanade, near the present Parry's Corner, using carbide jet-burners for projection. He bought the film projector and silent films from the Frenchman Du Pont and set up a business as film exhibitor. Soon, he tied up with Path, a well-known pioneering film-producing company, and imported projectors. This helped new cinema houses to sprout across the presidency. In later years, he produced talkies and also built a cinema in Coimbatore.