Klug, but this lasted only for a few months. The film scholar Stephen Hughes points out that within a few years there were regular ticketed shows in a hall in Pophams Broadway, started by one Mrs. The films all featured non-fictional subjects they were mostly photographed records of day-to-day events. Edwards first screened a selection of silent short films at the Victoria Public Hall in Madras. The industry also inspired independent filmmaking in Sri Lanka and Tamil diaspora populations in Malaysia, Singapore, and the Western Hemisphere. Over the last quarter of the 20th century, Tamil films from India established a global presence through distribution to an increasing number of overseas theatres in Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Japan, the Middle East, parts of Africa, Oceania, Europe, North America and other countries. Tamil cinema later had a profound effect on other filmmaking industries of India, establishing Madras (now Chennai) as a secondary hub for Hindi cinema, other South Indian film industries, as well as Sri Lankan cinema. By the end of the 1930s, the legislature of the State of Madras passed the Entertainment Tax Act of 1939. The first talking motion picture, Kalidas, was a multilingual film directed by H M Reddy and was released on 31 October 1931, less than seven months after India's first talking motion picture Alam Ara. The first Tamil silent film, Keechaka Vadham, was made by R. It is based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, in the Kodambakkam neighbourhood, leading to the industry's nickname Kollywood, the word being a portmanteau of Kodambakkam and Hollywood. Tamil cinema, also known as Kollywood, is the Indian filmmaking industry of Tamil-language motion pictures. For Kathmandu cinema, see Cinema of Nepal.