Melbourne March 10. (PTI): Australian state of Victoria has launched a special exhibition titled 'Cinema India - The Art of Bollywood' featuring landmark cinematic images from pre-independent India to the present day.

The Exhibition charts the historical, political and cultural changes experienced by the country, as seen through the eyes of the Bollywood, the National Gallery of Victoria said on Friday.

The exhibition brings together some of the most remarkable examples of Indian cinema art. From large-scale hoardings and posters to photo cards, booklets, costumes, original film trailers and excerpts from key films.

The exhibition will display landmark images and explore major themes, which outline the stylistic and historic development of Bollywood cinema.

Posters from many classic films including the Oscar nominated epic Mother India, Sholay and recent blockbusters such as 'Devdas', 'Lagaan' and 'Main Hoon Na' are represented. The exhibition has been organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The exhibition will feature many varied and exciting public programmes centred around Indian cinema and culture.

Cinema India also sheds further light on a Perth girl - Mary Evans who became "Fearless Nadia", the sword fighting, whip-cracking, punch-flinging star of India's booming Bollywood film industry in the 1930s and '40s.

She became known as "the Sultana of Stunts" and "Hunterwali" (Hunterwoman), after her most popular and daring film, shot in 1935, in which she went around cracking a whip, earning her yet another sobriquet, Whip Lady.

Evans' story is a relatively unknown one, so it is fittingly a focus of 'Cinema India', which opens at the National Gallery of Victoria on Friday.

Curator of International art at the NGV, Laurie Benson, had been a Bollywood buff since Indian-born high school friends introduced him to their cinema that has become the most prolific film industry in the world, with about 1000 films produced annually.

But not even Benson had heard of Fearless Nadia, despite her starring in about 50 films, until he began working on Cinema India.

"She sword-fights, she whips men, she punches them, picks them up and throws them," he says.

It was Wadia Movietone, headed by the brothers J B H and Homi Wadia, who gave Evans the chance to work in the film.

J B H in particular loved to invest his anti-fascist, socio-political beliefs and aspirations in his films, so Nadia became his feminist icon who fought the bad guys and their anti-social agendas, going where religious and social restrictions did not permit an Indian woman to go.

Cinema India also features lavish costumes, bold posters and excerpts from key films, such as the Oscar award-winning classic, Mother India, non-resident Indian films such as those shot in Australia, and hoardings, or billboards that are often hand-painted.

The NGV has flown out a family of hoarding painters from Mumbai, who earlier this week painted a six-metre hoarding in the NGV's foyer for the exhibition.