Cinema of West Bengal Cinema of West Bengal The cinema of West Bengal (), also known as Tollywood , refers to the Indian Bengali language film industry 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 center 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
West Bengal Renaissance. A hotbed of the Indian independence movement through the early 20thcentury, Bengal was divided during India's independence in 1947 along religious lines into two separate entities: West Bengal, a state of India, and East Bengal, a province of Pakistan which later became independent Bangladesh. Between 1977 and 2011 the state was administered by the world's longest elected Communist government. The economy of West Bengal is the sixth-largest state economy in India with in gross domestic product and a per capita GDP of . The state's cultural heritage, besides varied folk traditions, includes authors in literature, such as Nobel laureate