Singeetham Srinivas Garu is a legend and has been a versatile director since the beginning of his career. He is known to be a very experimental director, who worked on projects that involved a new perspective by the movie industries as well as audience. He was ahead of his time while delivering different concepts on social, political, dystopian and also realistic aspects. His movies were always a delight to watch by critics as well as audience because they always had something or other to take away home. He worked as assistant director for various movies in Telugu and Tamil. He was also Associate director for the movie Mayabazar. He directed movies in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi. He worked as director, producer, lyricist, composer and singer too. He has won two National Film Awards, seven state Nandi Awards, three Filmfare Awards South, and three Karnataka State Film Awards.
His contribution towards Indian Cinema is huge. His way of converting different concepts into movies was very different and he never was hesitant or scared to put his thoughts into a script. Below are the movies, that brought in different perspective in Indian film industry.
-Dikkatra Parvathi(1974)
This movie was Singeetham Garu’s directorial debut. This Tamil movie revolves around a very pressing issue of that time, addiction. The movie is about Parvathi, played by Lakshmi and Karappun played by Srikanth. They are a very happy couple with a child and everything nice. Soon, Karappun takes a loan to buy a cart and eventually gets addicted to drink. He becomes irresponsible with time, and can never repay the loan. The moneylender’s son takes advantage of the situation and Lakshmi gives in. Knowing this, Karuppan almost kills the moneylender’s son and gets arrested. She becomes unacceptable by her family and alone fights to release Karuppan. She finally succeeds by saying that she initiated things with moneylender’s son. Her husband gets to know this and says he can’t accept her anymore. She then gets on top of a hill and kills herself. The movie was seen as the most experimental concept-oriented that it brought in National Award for best feature film in Tamil and a Filmfare for best feature film. It was a factor of adventure to bring in a novel with a very dark aspect into a feature film.
-Tharam Maarindi(1977)
This was his directorial debut in Telugu. The movie is based on dirty rural politics of Telangana. An old aged man’s daughter Chenna is married to an older man who is an addict. She gets married because her father has promised heavy dowry and she had to give in with that too. But his son who is a liberal, goes against everyone and marries Parvathi who is from a backward caste in the same village. He is then punished to live in a Harijan society with his wife and work in dirty politics of the village. The factor Singeetham focused here is how the village politics work in reality. The movie perfectly depicts the unseen bureaucracy and faulted-system practices. In that period, movies such like this, were very new to the Telugu industry and it could catch attention of every common man. The movie was based on a fictitious novel By Madireddy Sulochana. Though the movie was a commercial failure, it won Nandi Award for Second best feature film.
-Pushpaka Vimanam(1987)
This was one of career best movies by Singeetham Garu. He had an idea of directing a movie, when he first saw an actor struggling to deliver an emotion without a single dialogue. He made this movie with different characters from different languages as there was no language barrier for making this movie. Kamal Haasan is the lead and Amala is the heroine in this film. The movie revolves around a jobless graduate who goes greedy when he finds an unconscious millionaire unattended on road. He goes in millionaire’s place and the rest of the movie is how he gets caught up and had to face different consequences. Firstly, the idea of picturing a movie without a single dialogue even after having apt technology is really experimental. It takes a lot of patience for the director to work on a project that doesn’t involve expression of words because it is hard to catch every emotion in every frame. The movie was relased in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and Tamil. The movie won National award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment, and a special mention in Shanghai film festival.
-Mayuri(1985)
This movie is probably the first biopic in Indian cinema. The movie is the life story, of dancer Sudha Chandran who lost her leg in an accident and came back to her dance career with her Jaipur foot. In the beginning of her career, Mayuri is a talented dancer with great passion and zeal. Mohan comes into picture who observes her and tries to get her different stage shows. One day she gets in an accident and loses her leg. She later learns that Mohan is married to some rich girl and didn’t want to be with her anymore. She then gets a prosthetic leg and practices her dance from scratch. She then achieves greatest of great heights and never looks any more. The idea of taking up a journey of a woman and making it a picture, was very different concept. 1980s was all about mainstream movies that had Ilayaraaja’s beats with family-oriented stories. This was like a cold breeze to the movie lovers of that time and just changed the face of Telugu industry. The movie was later remade in Hindi, named Naacho Mayuri and was dubbed in Malayalam and Tamil too. With this movie, Singeetham Srinivas won Filmfare award for Best Director and Sudha Chandran won National Award from Special Jury.
-Aditya 369(1991)
This was the first sci-fi movie that involved time travel. This was one of the fantasy-based movies that had a great impact on the Telugu audience that changed their expectations from films. The story revolves around a scientist’s experiment on time machine, in which his daughter Hema and her fiancé Krishna Kumar get in accidentally and travel to past, Krishnadevaraya empire and then again to the future where the world ends in third world war. The movie also has another element, where a a businessman who has a peculiar hobby of stealing rare artifacts, tries to steal a diamond from Krishnadevaraya time period. Rest of the movie is how they solve all this with time travel. The movie was seen by all ages and was a commercial success too. The movie was a exploratory dystopian concept that was very imaginary yet felt like a realistic at same time.
We wish you a very happy birthday sir!
