The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post-production, film festivals, distribution, and actors. Though the expense involved in making films almost immediately led film production to concentrate under the auspices of standing production companies, advances in affordable filmmaking equipment, as well as an expansion of opportunities to acquire investment capital from outside the film industry itself, have allowed independent film production to evolve.
Toby Stephens is a British actor who has appeared in films in the United Kingdom, United States and India. He is known for the roles of Bond villain Gustav Graves in the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day, for which he was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor, William Gordon in the 2005 Mangal Pandey: The Rising film and Edward Fairfax Rochester in the 2006 BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre. From 2014 to 2017, he starred as Captain Flint in the Starz television series Black Sails, followed by one of the lead roles in the Netflix science fiction series Lost in Space from 2018 to 2021. He has starred as the Greek God Poseidon in Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Rona Munro is a Scottish writer. She has written plays for theatre, radio, and television. Her film work includes Ken Loach's Ladybird, Ladybird (1994), Oranges and Sunshine (2010) for Jim Loach and Aimée & Jaguar (1999), co-authored by German director Max Färberböck. Munro is the second cousin of Scottish author Angus MacVicar.
Sir Edward Seymour Hicks, better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, actor-manager and producer. He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and producing Edwardian musical comedy, often together with his famous wife, Ellaline Terriss. His most famous acting role was that of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
The Cinema of Bangladesh, also known as Bangla cinema, is a diverse and vibrant entity, consisting of films produced across various regions in Bangladesh, each contributing its unique linguistic and cultural perspective. Beyond the dominant Dhaka based Bengali-language film industry Dhallywood, which is a portmanteau of "Dhaka" and "Hollywood", Bangladesh is home to cinema in several other languages and dialects. For instance, Chakma cinema from Bandarban, Garo cinema from Sherpur, Meitei and Sylheti cinema from Sylhet, Chatgaiya cinema from Chattogram. These regional cinemas play a crucial role in preserving and promoting the linguistic and cultural heritage of the country. The dominant style of Bangladeshi cinema is melodramatic cinema, which developed from 1947 to 1990 and characterizes most films to this day. Cinema was introduced in Bangladesh in 1898 by the Bradford Bioscope Company, credited to have arranged the first film release in Bangladesh. Between 1913 and 1914, the first production company, Picture House, was opened. A 1928 short silent film titled Sukumari was the first Bengali-produced film in the region. The first full-length film, The Last Kiss, was released in 1931.
Hiralal Sen is generally considered one of India's first filmmakers. In 1903, he filmed the popular Alibaba and Forty Thieves, the first full-length Indian film. A noted photographer, he is also credited with creating India's first advertising films and quite possibly India's first political film. A fire in 1917 destroyed all of his films.
St. George's Hall was a theatre located in Langham Place, off Regent Street in the West End of London. It was built in 1867 and closed in 1966. The hall could accommodate between 800 and 900 persons, or up to 1,500 persons including the galleries. The architect was John Taylor of Whitehall.
Madan Theatre Company, also known as Madan Theatres Limited or Madan Theatres in short, was a film production company founded by Jamshedji Framji & his partner Kanhaiyalal Kaushik, one of the pioneers of Indian Cinema.
William Haggar was a British pioneer of the cinema industry. Beginning his career as a travelling entertainer, Haggar, whose large family formed his theatre company, later bought a Bioscope show and earned his money in the fairgrounds of south Wales. In 1902 he began making his own short fictional films, making him one of the earliest directors in Britain. His films were shown worldwide and his short Desperate Poaching Affray is believed to have influenced early narrative drama in American film, especially in chase genre. As a director Haggar is recognised for his use of editing and the depth of staging in his melodramas and crime films.
Birendra Krishna Bhadra (1905–1991) was a radio broadcaster, playwright, actor, narrator and theatre director from Kolkata, India and a contemporary of Pankaj Mallick and Kazi Nazrul Islam. He worked for the All India Radio, India's National Radio broadcaster for several years during its early, starting 1930s, and during this period he produced and adapted several plays.
Feroz Abbas Khan is an Indian theatre and film director, playwright and screenwriter, who is most known for directing plays like Mughal-e-Azam, Saalgirah, Tumhari Amrita (1992), Salesman Ramlal and Gandhi Viruddh Gandhi.
Jamshedji Framji, professionally known as J. F. & Madan, was an Indian theatre and film magnate who was one of the pioneers of film production in India, an early exhibitor, distributor and producer of films and plays. He accumulated his wealth on the Parsi theatre district scene in Bombay in the 1890s where he owned two theatre companies. He moved to Calcutta in 1902 where he founded Elphinstone Bioscope Company, and began producing and exhibiting silent movies including Jyotish Sarkar's Bengal Partition Movement in 1905. He expanded his empire considerably after acquiring rights to Pathé Frères films. He produced Satyavadi Raja Harishchandra in 1917 and Bilwamangal in 1919. Satyavadi Raja Harishchandra was the first feature film to be shot in Calcutta. Elphinstone merged into Madan Theatres Limited in 1919 which brought adapted many of Bengali's most popular literary works to the stage. Madan Theatres was a major force in Indian theatre throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Cinema of West Bengal, also known as Tollywood or Bengali cinema, is the segment of Indian cinema, dedicated to the production of motion pictures in the Bengali language widely spoken in the state of West Bengal. It is based in the Tollygunge region of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The origins of the nickname Tollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood, dates back to 1932. It was a historically important film industry, at one time the centre of Indian film production. The Bengali film industry is known for producing many of Indian cinema's most critically acclaimed global Parallel Cinema and art films, with several of its filmmakers gaining prominence at the Indian National Film Awards as well as international acclaim.
Satyawadi Raja Harishchandra is a 1917 silent black and white Indian film based on Hindu mythology, directed by Rustomji Dhotiwala. It was produced by J. F. Madan's Elphinstone Bioscope. Credited as the first remake in Indian cinema, the film is a remake of the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra (1913) and was also inspired by an Urdu language drama, Harishchandra. The film is based on the mythological story of a Hindu King Harishchandra, the 36th king of the Solar Dynasty, who donated his entire kingdom and sold himself and his family to keep the promise given to the sage Vishvamitra in the dream. It is also the first feature film made in Calcutta. The intertitles used in the film were in Bengali language as the film was a silent film. The film was released on 24 March 1917 at New Tent Maidan, Calcutta.
Escape! is a 1930 British crime film directed by Basil Dean and starring Gerald du Maurier, Edna Best and Gordon Harker. It was based on the 1926 play of the same title by John Galsworthy, which was adapted again as a film in 1948.
Royal & Derngate is a theatre complex in the Cultural Quarter of Northampton, England, consisting of the Royal Theatre, Derngate Theatre and the Northampton Filmhouse. The Royal was built by theatre architect Charles J. Phipps and opened in 1884. Ninety-nine years later in 1983, Derngate, designed by RHWL, was built to the rear of the Royal. Whilst the two theatres were physically linked, they did not combine organisations until a formal merger in 1999; they are run by the Northampton Theatres Trust. The Royal Theatre, established as a producing house, has a capacity of 450 seats and since 1976 has been designated a Grade II listed building; Derngate Theatre seats a maximum of 1,200 and is a multi-purpose space in which the auditorium can be configured for a variety of events including theatre, opera, live music, dance, fashion and sports. The Northampton Filmhouse, an independent cinema built to the side of the complex, opened in 2013.
Albert Victor Bramble (1884–1963) was an English actor and film director. He began his acting career on the stage. He started acting in films in 1914 and subsequently turned to directing and producing films. He died on 17 May 1963.
Riddhi Sen is an Indian film actor who predominantly works in Bengali films along with a few Hindi films. He is the youngest actor in India to receive the National Film Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film Nagarkirtan.
Surangana Bandyopadhyay is an Indian actress and singer who is primarily known for Bengali films and web series.
Chandran Veyattummal (also known as Paris Chandran/ Paris V Chandran; 30 April 1956 – 22 May 2022) was born in a traditional musical family in Narikkuni, Kozhikode district of Kerala.
