Online Tollywood Movies

Tollywood Movies History:

Tollywood refers to the Telugu film industry based in AndhraPradesh. The word Tollywood is an amalgamation of Hollywood and Telugu. Telugu is the mother tongue of the people of Andhra Pradesh. Even though the films are in Telugu, they enjoy a patronage in the neighboring states of Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Kerala as well. In fact, a lot of Telugu films are being remade in Hindi and Malayalam so that they can reach the Malayalam and Hindi speaking states.

The first Telugu film with dialogues was Bhakta Prahlad and was produced by H.M. Reddy. However, the industry’s first big commercial success came with the film Lavakusa, which was released in 1934 which had Parupalli Subbarao and Sriranjani in lead roles. The film, directed by C. Pullaiah made the young film industry very popular. By 1936, the themes of the films had shifted from religious and mythological to social. This continued for the next few years and films like Prema Vijayam, Vandemataram and Malli Pelli were released during this period.

With the Second World War came the scarcity of resources and the British Raj limited the use of the filmstrip from 20,000 feet to 11,000 feet in 1943 which also lowered the number of films produced during that period. But prior to the war, independent studios were formed and they signed contracts with actors and actresses posing limits on them so that they could not work for any other studio. Also, the themes of the films changed from social to folklore legends. In 1942, releasing of Balanagamma symbolized these changes. The film was produced by Gemini Studios and incorporated fantasy elements of cultural lore.

Some of the famous actors of the Telugu film industry include NTR , Akkineni Nageswara Rao , Krishna, Chandramohan , Mohan babu , Chiranjeevi , Nagarjuna Akkineni , Venkatesh , Jagapathi Babu, etc. The popular actresses over the years have been Savithri, Jamuna, Anjali Devi, Vanisri, Sarada, Jayanthi, Surya Kantham, Chaaya Devi, Sridevi etc.