Bhojpuri fim industry

Bhojpuri, often considered a dialect of Hindi, originates in western Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh in northern India. Speakers of it and its creoles are found in many parts of the world, including Brazil, Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, South Africa, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, many colonizers faced labor shortages due to the abolition of slavery; thus, they imported many Indians, many from Bhojpuri-speaking regions, as indentured servants to labor on plantations. Today, some 200 million people in the West Indies, Oceania, and South America speak Bhojpuri as a native or second language. [cite book |title=Language in Indenture: A Sociolinguistic History of Bhojpuri-Hindi in South Africa |last=Mesthrie |first=Rajend |year=1991 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=041506404X |pages=19-32 ]

Bhojpuri's history begins in 1962 with the well-received film "Ganga Maiyya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo" ("Mother Ganges, I will offer you a yellow sari"), which was directed by Kundan Kumar. [IMDB: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233774/] ] Throughout the following decades, films were produced only in fits and starts. Films such as "Bidesiya" ("Foreigner," 1963, directed by S. N. Tripathi) and "Ganga" ("Ganges," 1965, directed by Kundan Kumar) were profitable and popular, but in general Bhojpuri films were not commonly produced in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1980s, enough Bhojpuri films were produced to tentatively make up an industry. Films such as "Mai" ("Mom," 1989, directed by Rajkumar Sharma) and "Hamar Bhauji" ("My Brother's Wife," 1983, directed by Kalpataru) continued to have at least sporadic success at the box office. However, this trend faded out by the end of the decade, and by 1990, the nascent industry seemed to be completely finished. [Tripathy, Ratnakar (2007) 'BHOJPURI CINEMA', South AsianPopular Culture, 5:2, 145 - 165]

The industry took off again in 2001 with the super hit "Saiyyan Hamar" ("My Sweetheart," directed by Mohan Prasad), which shot the hero of that film, Ravi Kissan, to superstardom. [http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060414/asp/etc/story_6075200.asp] This success was quickly followed by several other remarkably successful films, including "Panditji Batai Na Biyah Kab Hoi" ("Priest, tell me when I will marry," 2005, directed by Mohan Prasad) and "Sasura Bada Paisa Wala" ("My father-in-law, the rich guy," 2005). In a measure of the Bhojpuri film industry's rise, both of these did much better business in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar than mainstream Bollywood hits at the time, and both films, made on extremely tight budgets, earned back more than ten times their production costs. ["Move over Bollywood, Here's Bhojpuri," BBC News Online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/4512812.stm ] "Sasura Bada Paisa Wala" also introduced Manoj Tiwari, formerly a well-loved folk singer, to the wider audiences of Bhojpuri cinema. In 2008, he and Ravi Kissan are still the leading actors of Bhojpuri films, and their fees increase with their fame. The extremely rapid success of their films has led to dramatic increases in Bhojpuri cinema's visibility, and the industry now supports an awards show [http://www.bhojpurifilmaward.com/] and a trade magazine, "Bhojpuri City", [http://www.bhojpuricity.com/] which chronicles the production and release of what are now over one hundred films per year. Many of the major stars of mainstream Bollywood cinema, including Amitabh Bachchan, have also recently worked in Bhojpuri films.

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