It was not long ago when tamil cinema (in fact, South Indian cinema as a whole) was considered the poor cousin of Bollywood - as Hindi cinema is more commonly known. Tamil movies then used to have a viewership limited to Tamil Nadu only and the actors and actresses were scarcely known beyond the borders of the state. There were almost no cases of a tamil movie being dubbed into other languages and tamil tunes rarely echoed out of radios in the North. Directors like K.Balachander, Sridhar and Bhimsingh, to name a few, were making quality movies but I doubt if anyone outside of TamilNadu had heard of their names.

I feel that this scenario has undergone a rather radical change. Tamil cinema now includes some of the most talented and popular performers and technicians in the country. If someone comes up with a collection of the cream of the crop in each of the segments of the film industry, there is no doubt that people from the tamil cine field will be a sizeable chunk of the group (the percentage will be even higher if the entire South Indian film industry was considered but I'm going to concentrate on tamil cinema in this article). So lets look at some of the people who have been responsible for placing tamil cinema on the national (and nowadays, even international!) map.

Actors
Few would argue that Kamalhassan is one of the best actors in India. While actors like Mammootty, Mohanlal, Naseeruddin Shah and Shah Rukh Khan are excellent actors in their own right, none of them possesses the degree of versatility exhibited by Kamal. His three national awards and 14 filmfare awards (the highest for any actor) offer ample proof of his talent. After histrionics, dancing talent can be considered a crucial asset for an actor. We have an ace in that department too. As far as dancing stars go, Prabhu Deva doesn't have much competition and is acknowledged as one of the best in the country.

Tamil cinema also has one of the highest paid actors in the country in Rajnikanth. The other Indian actors to achieve superstar status (this term can loosely be defined as the ability to make a movie a box-office hit based purely on one's popularity, regardless of the other aspects of the movie) in Rajnikanth's time frame include Amitabh Bachan and Chiranjeevi. But neither of those actors can match the winning streak exhibited by Rajnikanth. Amitabh Bachan's last few movies before he went on a break (like Toofan, Jaadugar and even Shahenshah) were disasters. Even his much-hyped comeback has been anti-climactic with him delivering one flop after another. Chiranjeevi too had a string of flops which forced him to go on a hiatus while he pondered over the reasons for the failures and attempted to rectify them. But Rajnikanth has just had one success after the other with each of his movies being a bigger money-earner than the last. He has gone from strength to strength and enjoys unprecedented popularity in Tamil Nadu. And then came news of Muthu being a huge hit in Japan. Further releases only increased his popularity there and he is the only Indian star to be such a huge draw among the non-Indian population in a foreign country.

Directors
If there was one person who could be credited with single-handedly popularising tamil cinema on a national level, it would be Manirathnam. His Roja, dubbed into Hindi, captured the collective hearts of the nation, putting Tamil cinema's name on the map of Indian cinema. And he didn't stop there. His Bombay was considered a brave and honest portrayal of the riots in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. Though the third part of his trilogy Dil Se (Uyire in tamil) flopped, his forthcoming products are still awaited with great expectations all over the country. He was followed by Shankar whose Kaadhalan and Indian were both dubbed into Hindi and Telugu. Hindustani (the Hindi version of Indian) was a huge critical and commercial success. The popularity of these directors should be evident from the readiness of top Bollywood actresses to appear in their movies. Aishwarya Rai chose Manirathnam to lauch her career while Manisha Koirala and Urmila, both of them at the peak of their careers, worked together in Indian.

Music Directors
Tamil performers are excelling in other, behind-the-scenes departments too. One tamil performer who has the entire nation dancing to his beats is A.R.Rehman. With musical blockbusters like Taal under his belt, the whizkid is the most sought after music director in India. Whether original or dubbed, his tunes are eagerly lapped up throughout the country. Now he is teaming up with Andrew Lloyd Webber to create a musical which just might give him a break in the international arena. Even earlier, many popular tunes of Ilaiyaraja were plagiarised by Hindi music directors and many of these songs went on the become huge hits at an all India level.

Others
P.C.Sriram and Santosh Sivan are nationally acclaimed as among the best cinematographers in the country. Infact Santosh Sivan has recently, also made his mark as a director with Terrorist, which has been garnering international acclaim (Roger Ebert, arguably the most widely seen, read and respected critic in the United States, awarded the movie three and a half stars). Among other departments, the first name that pops into the mind when talking about art direction is Thotta Tharani and the duo of Lenin-Vijayan has made a habit of collecting awards for their editing work.

Tamil movies used to be virtually shut out of the National awards before. The fact that 'Sivaji' Ganesan never won the Best Actor award should alone make the state of affairs amply clear. But the number of awards coming to tamil movies has increased dramatically in recent years and the above mentioned people deserve a lot of credit for that. Sure we were proud of Kodambakkam before too. But however good the quality of a product, it is recognition that really makes one happy. The haul of national awards proves that the talent has been recognised and that is what makes the feeling even better.

© 2000 Balaji Balasubramaniam