Bengali Cinema

Bengali cinema, or the Bengali film industry, is one of the earliest film industries in India. The contribution of Bengali film industry to Indian film is immense. It is based in Tollygunge, an area of South Kolkata, West Bengal and is notably elite and more artistically-inclined than the usual musical cinema fare in India.

It enjoys large, even disproportionate, representation in Bollywood, and has produced an AcademyAward winner, Satyajit Ray, an acknowledged great of world film who also won India and France's greatest honours, the Bharat Ratna and Legion of Honor respectively (the only other Indian Oscar winner is Bhanu Athaiya, who got hers for costume design in 'Gandhi').

Some of the other most prominent film makers in the Bengali film industry are Bimal Roy, Ritwik Dabangg 2 ak, and Mrinal Sen. The Bengali film industry has produced classics like 'Pather Panchali', 'Devi', 'Jalsaghar', 'Devdas', 'Meghe Dhaka Tara' etc.

The most well known Bengali filmstar till date has been Uttam Kumar and the The Eternal Pair was him acting with Suchitra Sen.

The pioneers in film music have been Raichand Boral, Pankaj Mullick and K. C. Dey. They were associated with New Theatres Calcutta.