100 Essential Indian Films, by Rohit K. Dasgupta and Sangeeta Datta

Abstract

Among the many film industries of South Asia, the Indian film industry is the most prolific, specifically Hindi language film, more commonly known as Bollywood, which produces almost four hundred films annually. Bollywood films dominate the national market. These films have also been exported successfully to parts of the Middle East, Africa, and the Asiatic regions of the former Soviet Union, as well as to Canada, Australia, the UK, and the US. The success of these films abroad is largely down to the presence of Indian communities living in these regions; as the conventional melodramatic plot structures, dance numbers and musicals tend to deter Western audiences.

Keywords

• indian
• cinema
• bollywood
• parallel
• regional