Bollywood is an informal name of one of the centres of the Indian film industry situated in Mumbai. It originated from putting together the old city name (Bombay) and Hollywood, the centre of American film industry. Outside India, this name is sometimes incorrectly used as a label for the whole Indian film production, even though these are only the films shot in Hindi. Apart from Bollywood, there are other centres of film industry in India, where films are also produced in other languages of India (in Tamil – Kollywood, Telugu – Tollywood, Bengali, and Malayalam).
In particular, what I perceive as interesting are the cultural differences and specific visuality of Bollywood production. Provided that Hollywood studios are most often associated with the already iconographic Hollywood sign, when searching the “Bollywood” entry, we will come across, above all, the collection of young actresses corresponding to a specific idea of beauty. Compared to the Western symbol in the form of text, we can observe searching for a prototype of the contemporary Oriental ideal of physical beauty. Similarly to Hollywood, even Bollywood experienced its golden age, which is classified by film historian in the period between 1940 and 1960. Nevertheless, gold plays an important role in the Indian culture, particularly associated with both the status of social prestige, and the celebration of the magic and divine. All over the world, the Indians are the biggest gold purchasers and according to the estimate of Albert Cheng, Indian expert specialising in precious metals, the Indians have approx. 18,000 – 20,000 tonnes of gold in private possession, taking the form of bars, coins, and jewels.