Challenges Faced by Regional Indian Cinema:a Study in context of Marathi Cinema

Abstract

India is a hub known for films and its tremendous influence on people.Countries other than India with a huge fan following for a galaxy of Indian actors and directors are currently on the rise. India being a country of diversity in every sphere of life has its share of diversity in cinemas too. Be it Language, State, Culture, Belief, Actors, Technique, Themes, Taste and Attitude, we are obliged to allow a diversity of thought-provoking subjects, views, opinions depending upon the language and the region of the country the film is made.

Regional films make a great impact on people of the same community and the region as a whole. People at large support their own regional film industry and find it easy to get connected with the actors, themes and their culture. Films in various Indian Languages like Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi, Marathi, Hindi and Bengali are made regionally,in their own film industry.One of the popular regional film industries in India is The Hindi/Urdu film industrythat is based in Mumbai, formerly Bombay known as “Bollywood”. Similar neologisms have been coined so as to identify the films region wise like Tollywood, Kollywood that identifies with the language of the film like Telugu films and Kannada films. Undoubtedly, the impact of the regional Cinema is tremendous on our psychology as we not only get connected with the roots but also are comfortable when it comes to understanding the core of the subject matter in the film.It is a fact that message conveyed in our own language is more impressive and wide spread and holds the mass as one unit!

However,Bollywood industry is seen to have caught the bull’s eye making the largest number of films hit the box office records. National Language Hindi has outnumbered regional language speakers of other Indian languages.  Inspite of being well established in regional language films, actors, producers, writers, directors, singers, choreographers end up venturing in Bollywood. It has also been noted that there is a steep decrease in number of viewers for regional language films.

This paper is an attempt to find the root-cause of problems highlighting thechallenges faced by Regional Indian Cinema. A Study in context of Marathi Cinema in a five-year span from 2013 to 2018 is made for thorough understanding of the root cause of the challenges faced by Regional Indian Cinema