Lollywood

Lollywood (Urdu: لالیوُڈ) refers to the Pakistani film industry based in the city of Lahore. The word "Lollywood" was first coined in the summer of 1989 in the now defunct magazine "Glamour" published from Karachi by a gossip columnist Saleem Nasir. The film industry in Lahore started in 1929 with the opening of the United Players' Studios on Ravi Road. The cornerstone  for the studio was set by Abdur Rashid Kardar. Since then the studio has managed various indigenous productions competing with other film production centres in the undivided India, namely Bombay and Calcutta.

Most of the feature films shot in Pakistan are in National Language Urdu, Urdu is sometimes used in feature films of Bollywood at small scale, but are largely in Hindi, and may also include films in local languages like, Punjabi, Pashto, Balochi or Sindhi.

The Pakistani film industry is credited with having produced some of the most notable and recognised filmmakers, actors, writers and directors, and for introducing pop music to South Asia.

History

Birth of cinema (1896–1910)
Further information: Cinema of India, Hiralal Sen, H. S. Bhatavdekar, and Jamshedji Framji Madan

Cinema was introduced to India on 7 July 1896, when the Lumiere brothers' Cinématographe showed six short silent films at Watson's Hotel in Bombay.[2] A few years later in 1898, Hiralal Sen started filming scenes of theatre productions in Calcutta,[3] inspired by English professor Stephenson who had brought to India the country's first bioscope.[4] Harischandra Sakharam Bhatavdekar imported a camera from London at a price of 21 guineas and filmed the first Indian documentary, a wrestling match in Hanging Gardens, Bombay, in 1897.[5] He also filmed the first Indian news film, a record of Ragunath P. Paranjpe's return from Cambridge University upon securing a distinction in mathematics. Bhatavdekar is however best known for filming the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon's Delhi Durbar that marked the enthronement of Edward VII in 1903.[5]

It was then that the commercial potential of the Indian cinema was realised. With F.B. Thanewala's Grand Kinetoscope Newsreels and Jamshedji Framji Madan's Madan Theatres Limited, India became counted amongst the largest distributors of American films after World War I.[6] Madan also hired foreign directors Eugenio De Liguoro and Camille Legrand to compliment his productions with expertise, grand sets for popular mythological storylines and special effects[7] which ensured good returns. Cinema houses were built in major cities in India. Newsreels of the Boer Wars were a regular show at make-shift theatres in Bombay.[8] Tents were placed in vast spaces or maidans to accommodate a larger audience, giving birth to the term maidan cinema.[9]

French film company Pathé opened an Indian office in 1907, the first foreign film production company in the country.[10] In the same year, a purpose-built cinema theatre was constructed