hollywood, bollywood...mollywood??

hollywood is a district in los angeles, california. due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of american movies, the word 'hollywood' is used as a metonym of american cinema. in 1870, an agricultural community flourished in the area with thriving crops, mostly perennial shrubs among which toyon bushes were the most prominent. the toyon bush produced red-color berries which were collected in large amounts during the x'mas season; the toyon berries came to be widely-known as christmas berry and california holly. during his honeymoon in 1886, the nation's most succesfful land developer and banker, h.j. whitely, known as 'father of hollywood' coined the term 'hollywood' and transformed the village into a flourishing location. in 1900, film-making started in the greater los angeles area and the biograph company filmed the short film 'a daring hold-up in southern california'. in 1906. the biograph company sent director d.w. griffith and his troupe to explore new territories. griffith chanced upon the friendly village of hollywood and shot a one-reel melodrama called 'in old california' - the first film shot in hollywood. in 1911, an unused roadhouse was converted into nestor studio, the first movie studio in hollywood. in 1914, the first feature film made in this studio was the cecil b. demille directed 'the squaw man'. by 1915, majority of the american films were being produced in hollywood. since the 1920's, hollywood had been the largest producer of movies in the world. the name 'hollywood' became synonymous to the home of a film-making indutry.

during the british colonial rule, bombay was the financial capital of india; the reason why the lumiere brothers chose bombay to project their films in 1896. the first short films were directed by the bengali photographer, hiralal sen starting with 'the flower of persia' in 1898. in 1913, the first full-length motion picture 'raja harishchandra' was produced by dadasaheb phalke. the movie had female roles played by an all-male starcast, ran for 40 minutes and was a stupendous success. by 1919, jamshedji framji madan's elphinstone bioscope company (madan theatres) controlled 127 theatres across the country with its base in bombay. in 1931, ardeshir irani released the first indian talkie - 'alam ara' which also marked the beginning of filmi music having seven songs in a movie that had a running time 0f 124 minutes. the 'b' of bombay combined with the term 'hollywood', to define the word that descibed indian film industry - bollywood. by the 1970's bollywood went past hollywood by producing 1000 films annually, in which nearly 600 were in hindu and telugu languages.

when the locations for the flourishing movie industries gave the prefix for -wood in american and hindi movies, for malayalam movies, the language proved the deciding factor. the letter 'm' was used to coin the term 'mollywood'. in 1907, he first cinema hall was established by k.w. joseph in trichur. in 1913, jose kattukaran established the first electrically operated film projector in jose electrical bioscope in trichur. initially, english, hindi and tamil movies dominated the screens. the first malayalam movie was 'vigathakumaran' produced and directed by businessman j.c. daniel. in 1938, the first talkie 'balan' directed by s. nottani was released. it was the establishment of the udaya studio in allepey in 1947 by kunjakko, that took malayalam movies out of the cluthces of tamil producers. 1951 saw the release of the musical drama 'jeevithanouka' considered the first widely accepted malayalam movie.

i have always hated the word mollywood, even for that the matter, the word bollywood. there are lots of differences between bollywood and its american counterpart. since bombay has been recently rechristened to mumbai, even hindi film industry should have been renamed as mullywood, not to confuse with the malayalam industry.