For decades movie has been the primary mode of entertainment for Indians. How can Orissa stay behind? The first Oriya movie "Sita Bibaha" (Sita’s wedding) based on a play by Kamapala Mishra. Mohan Sundar Dev Goswami of Puri produced the movie during 1934-35.

During the early post-independence era some wealthy businessmen, landlords and zamindaars put their earnest effort to produce Oriya movies. They formed an organization named ‘Utkala Chalachitra Pratisthana’ to facilitate the growth of the entertainment industry in Orissa.

There always was a need to organize the industry under a single roof. Different organizations tried to draw the attention of the government for the same, but with no result.

In the mid-70s some organizations started working towards the distribution of the movies in the state. The distribution channel started developing in the state. But this could not cater to the very basic problem of Oriya movie production. The distributors started looking at other lucrative areas of wealth generation. The focus started moving towards Hindi movies, which already started making a big impact on the Indian society. So the Oriya movie was losing its ground in both production and distribution.

In the 80s the government started realizing the importance of movie in creating a social symbol for the state. Then came a lot of activities to kick start the movie industry in Orissa. One of the smart moves was to establish a movie studio with all the modern facilities like shooting, recording, editing and dubbing. This move was well supported and funded by Orissa Financial Development Corporation. So the result was the Kalinga Studio in Bhubaneswar. Another bold move by the government was to declare movie production as an industry. This started attracting a lot of young entrepreneurs to this area.