Tamil Cinema - Kollywood

Tamil Film Industry is home to Tamil-language cinema based in India and is sometimes referred to as Kollywood. The name, Kollywood, has derived from Kodambakkam, the area in Chennai (formerly Madras), where Kollywood films are widely produced. Tamil language movies are also filmed in Sri Lanka.

Silent movies were produced in Kollywood since 1916 and the era of talkies dawned in 1931. By the end of the 1930s, the industry was booming to the extent that the State of Madras legislature passed the pioneering Entertainment Tax Act 1939 with little opposition.

Kollywood and the other major cinematic hubs (Telugu, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Malayalam, and Assamese) constitute the broader Indian film industry, whose output is the largest in the world in number of tickets sold. In 1959, the Kollywood-produced film Veerapandiya Kattabomman won the "Best Movie" award at that year's Afro-Asian Festival. The 1987 film Nayagan was included by Time in their list of "All Time 100 Best movies". Malli, released in 1998, won the Golden Pyramid Best Film award at that year's Cairo International Film Festival, and The Terrorist won the same award in 1999. In 2004, Virumandi won the Best Asian Movie award. The 2005 release Raam won both Best Musical Score and Best Actor awards at the 2006 Cyprus International Film Festival, and another 2005 release, Navarasa, won the "Angel Independent Spirit Award" and "Best Supporting Actor" awards at the Monaco International Film Festival. Won best Actress and best Movie award at The 9th OSIAN CINEFAN Asian & Arab Film Festival.

Tamil films enjoy significant patronage in the neighbouring southern States like Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh too. In Kerala the films are directly released in Tamil but in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka they are preferred by dubbing into regional languages. There is a fair amount of dispersion amongst the Indian film industries. Many successful Tamil films have been remade by the Hindi and Telugu film industries .