Also called 'art' films, they veered away from the mainstream style, avoiding stars, populist dialogues, and sometimes shunning songs. A remarkable feature of that era was that the best of Kannada writers of the time were engaging with cinema. S L Bhyrappa, U R Ananthamurthy, Girish Karnad, Chandrashekar Kambar, P Lankesh and Poornachandra Tejaswi were among those whose literary works were recreated on celluloid. Karnad, Kambar and Lankesh also directed and acted in films.

The first ever Kannada film, Sati Savitri, was released in 1934. In its nine decades of existence, Kannada cinema has witnessed its fair share of ups and downs. Initially, because film production in all southern languages was concentrated in Chennai (then Madras), Kannada cinema had to jostle with the more affluent Tamil and Telugu industries for studio and theatre space. A hurdle to making original films in Kannada was dubbing - films produced in other languages were voice-dubbed into Kannada and released across the Kannada-speaking regions. The costs were low, but Kannada talent got no opportunities.

In the early 1960s, language activists, led by writers Aa Na Kru and Ma Ramamurthy and supported by film stalwarts such as Rajkumar, campaigned against dubbing, and an informal ban came into effect. No film was dubbed into Kannada for nearly six decades.

Eventually, the ban was challenged, and the Competition Commission of India ruled against it. Since 2015, the resistance to dubbed films has subsided, but audiences continue to favour original films made in Kannada. If anything, dubbing into Kannada has helped OTT streams expand their footprint without investing in original Kannada content.