Raja Harishchandra, the first full-length Indian feature film, is released, marking the beginning of the Indian film industry.

Raja Harishchandra is a 1913 Indian silent film directed and produced by Dadasaheb Phalke. It is often considered the first full-length Indian feature film. Raja Harishchandra features Dattatraya Damodar Dabke, Anna Salunke, Bhalchandra Phalke and Gajanan Vasudev Sane. It is based on the legend of Harishchandra, with Dabke portraying the title character. The film, being silent, had English, Marathi, and Hindi-language intertitles.

A feature film or feature-length film, also called a theatrical film, is a film with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment theatrical program. The term feature film originally referred to the main, full-length film in a cinema program that included a short film and often a newsreel. Matinee programs, especially in the United States and Canada, in general, also included cartoons, at least one weekly serial and, typically, a second feature-length film on weekends.

The cinema of India, consisting of motion pictures made by the Indian film industry, has had a large effect on world cinema since the second half of the 20th century. Indian cinema is made up of various film industries, each focused on producing films in a specific language, such as Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Assamese, Odia and others.