Original Vintage Bollywood Movie Posters, in Mumbai

From the archive record

The word Bollywood is a play on Hollywood, with the B coming from Bombay (now known as Mumbai), which is the center of the Indian film world. The word was coined in the 1970s by the writer of a magazine gossip column, though there is disagreement as to which journalist was the first to use it. However, Indian cinema dates all the way back to 1913 and the silent film Raja Harishchandra, the first-ever Indian feature film. Its producer, Dadasaheb Phalke, was Indian cinema’s first mogul, and he oversaw the production of 23 films between 1913 and 1918. Yet unlike Hollywood, initial growth in the industry was slow. It was around 1947 that the industry went through significant changes. One could argue that it was during this time that the modern Indian film was born. Manmohan Desai was one of th