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Raja Harishchandra
(1913) was the first silent feature film made in India. It
was made by
Dadasaheb Phalke.
By the 1930s, the industry was producing over 200 films
per
annum. The first Indian sound film,
Ardeshir Irani's
Alam Ara
(1931), was a super hit. There was clearly a huge market
for talkies and musicals; Bollywood and all the regional film
industries quickly switched to sound filming.The
1930s and 1940s were tumultuous times: India was buffeted by the
Great Depression,
World
War II, the
Indian independence movement, and the
violence of the
Partition. Most Bollywood films were
unabashedly escapist, but there were also a number of filmmakers who
tackled tough social issues, or used the struggle for Indian
independence as a backdrop for their plots. In the late 1950s,
Bollywood released its first color films; however, the majority of
films continued to be black-and-white until the mid-1960s.
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