Tamil Cinema is popularly called as Kollywood- derived from Kodambakkam + Hollywood. Kodambakkam is a locality in the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India in and around which are the maximum concentration of film studios, and consequently also homes of people in the cine field.

Kollywood is one of the three major film making industries in India along with Bollywood and Tollywood. It is renowned for its concentration of talented artists. Whether it be the field of direction, cinematography, choreography music or acting, Kollywood has been the top amongst the three when it comes to quality. Though it lacks the richness in showing huge sets and foreign locations in songs and other situations it comes up with movies having good storyline and with technical savvy.

Most of the good works done here are then remade into the other regional languages with a screen play and other ingredients made to suit their people's taste.

Tamil Cinema is famous for talented artistes like Sivaji Ganesan, Mani Rathnam, Kamal Hassan, Ilayaraja, A.R. Rahman.

See also: Bollywood.