Bollywood vs. Tollywood vs. Kollywood vs. Lollywood and so on
I referenced my interest in Bollywood in this site's inaugural post. So I figured I would get the ball rolling by clarifying (for the YouTube cruising masses) the distinctions that exist in Sub-Continental film.
Often, people see a movie clip with South Asian folks and automatically assume that makes it "Bollywood" - not so! The post title basically highlights some of the diversity of the regional cinema that exists within the Indian Sub-Continent.
Bollywood is a term that is specific to the Hindi film industry based out of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India.
Kollywood is a term that is used specifically in reference to Tamil cinema and the Tamil film industry based out of Chennai (formerly Madras) in the state of Tamil Nadu in south India.
Tollywood references Telugu language cinema that is centred geographically in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India.
Lollywood is indicative of Pakistani film, coming out of the city of Lahore, Pakistan.
While Bollywood film is huge, it would be a mistake to assume that these regional cinemas are small fish in comparison. Lollywood is probably the one that is smallest, but the Pakistani film industry is growing. I'll write about the growth of Lollywood horror in a future post.
Just for fun and in order to differentiate I'll post a couple of clips that come from each of these cinemas. Some will be familiar (I can't resist the re-post) and others might be new to you: