36 Days of Type: 9

9: Kannada Film Industry

Bengaluru is home to the Kannada film industry, which churns out about 80 Kannada movies each year. In 1934, the first Kannada talkie, Sati Sulochana, appeared in theatres, followed by Bhakta Dhruva. Kannada cinema, also known as Sandalwood, is the segment of Indian cinema.

Kannada cinema is known for producing experimental works such as Girish Kasaravalli's Ghatashraddha (1977), which won the Ducats Award at the Manneham Film Festival Germany, Dweepa (2002), which won Best Film at Moscow International Film Festival, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao's silent film Pushpaka Vimana (1987), screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Ram Gopal Varma's docudrama Killing Veerappan (2016), and Prashanth Neel's Historical drama, K.G.F: Chapter 1 (2018), which became the first Kannada language film to have grossed ₹250 crores worldwide at the box office.

One cannot just refer to KFI without the legend Dr. Rajkumar. Matinee idol, Rajkumar entered Kannada cinema after his long stint as a dramatist with Gubbi Veeranna's Gubbi Drama Company, which he joined at the age of eight, before he got his first break as a lead in the 1954 film Bedara Kannappa. Widely acclaimed as one of the finest actors in the history of Indian cinema, he is considered a cultural icon in the Kannada diaspora.

Just Bengaluru Things.