Master of the Arts
“Had I not been a film maker” said this man once, “I would have been a teacher and built a school on the lines of Shantiniketan“. No bout a doubt it, if we were to look at his extensive experimentation with cinematic work and his exhaustive toolbox of skills, including writing, music and painting.
After half a century of film making career – with an amazingly wide canvas of subjects ranging from family dramas to social satires to folklore to mythologies to 3D animation features that no other contemporary filmmaker has attempted – his passion for experimentation remains the same.
At 75, he still retains the youthful exuberance and goes about his forthcoming ventures with the enthusiasm of a debutante.
Dr.Raj Kumar, Akkineni Nageswara Rao, and Kamal Hassan, are some of the legends he has worked with.
Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, the eternal student of cinema enrolled in a course to learn the art of making 3D animation films before starting work on his first animation movie. The effort was evident – the film won a special jury award at the International Children’s Film Festival 2003, got selected for Mumbai International Film Festival 2004, and did well commercially in its theatrical release.
Born in Udayagiri in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh, on September 21, 1931 to Ramachandra Rao, a village school headmaster “whose greatest assets were his sense of humour and ability to put himself in other people’s shoes“, and Sakunthala Bai, a violinist, Singeetham showed glimpses of talent both in plays and music even as a school student. “I guess my sense of humor and love for music are genetic” he told a journo once.
It was while studying at Madras Presidency College he honed his skills in stage plays under the tutelage of the great Harindranath Chatopadhyay.
After graduating from Madras Univeristy (majoring in Physics) his only dream was to get into films. All his initial attempts to meet the veteran director K.V.Reddy failed. Singeetham went back to his family at Sullurupet to work as a teacher in a local school.
But his fire for theatrics only grew and his passion for stage made him write two experimental plays Bhrama and Anthyaghattam and staged them with his students. Both the plays won him several awards. The play Anthyaghattam (Last Episode) was later made a text for students of Theatre Arts in Andhra University.
At the request of a family friend and popular singer plus actress Tanguturi Suryakumari he had written Chitrarjuna, a musical play adopted from Rabindranath Tagore’s `Chitra – Prince of the Dark Chamber’.
It was a memorable day for Singeetham when Chitarjuna was specially played for Jawaharlal Nehru in Delhi. Later Tom Buchan a Scottish playwright translated it in English for an American television channel.
Young Singeetham, at the same time, was also showcasing his prowess in journalism by writing for Telugu Swatantra – in due course he was interviewing such stalwarts in the field as Mary Seaton the author of Eisenstein’s biography (and later the biographer of Satyajit Ray).
Films and K.V. Reddy were still at the back of his mind though. So in 1954 he made one final effort to meet his favorite director – he gave it all he had – and the lady luck smiled. K.V.Reddy granted audience and listened to this young man’s enthusiastic exuberence. K.V. then gave him a copy of Monkey’s Paw (a short story by W.W.Jacobs) and asked him to write a scenario based on the story.
Three months later, Singeetham came back – without any knowledge of the art of writing a cinema script he wrote the script with dialogues – and K.V was impressed and took him as an apprentice.
His first brush with cinema, as a technician, was in 1954, assisting (AD) the great K.V.Reddy (Director) during his legendary Mayabazaar (telugu and tamil). In due course SSR graduated as THE associate director under K.V and was working for all his films. Later, when the poet turned filmmaker Tikkavarapu Pattabhi Rami Reddy (known as Pathabhi in literary circles) launched Samskara, a film based on U. R. Ananathamurthy’s famous novel, he chose this young man as his executive director. The film won the President’s gold medal in 1971. His first independant movie as a director was an offbeat feature Neethi Nijayithi (telugu) made in 1972 – a story with an arthouse feel, about a dumb boy – which, quite honestly, was ahead of its time.
Unperturbed by the commercial response of his debut film, he went ahead painting his passion on the celluloid canvas. And he chose to take a bigger bite this time – by adopting a novel penned by Rajaji to screen – and the world noticed.
Rajaji is known to hate films – and moved by the powerful narrative of the novel about the evils of alcoholism – the young teetotaler went to see the great teacher. He told Rajaji that he wanted to make a film using this story written by this man who hated films. Rajaji blessed the young auteur saying “But, I only hate bad films!” That was the moment when the budding Vamana like director took his first step towards scaling the three worlds and becoming the almighty Trivikrama.
Dikkatra Parvathi, the movie, brought him name and fame, and yes, the young man was back in game, with more at stake. Zamindaru Gari Ammayi (telugu) was released in 1975 – incorporating all the lessons learnt during the first two movies – and hit the box-office bullseye. Thus started his never ending journey of success.
[Upcoming Related Posts: Singeetham's Films - Analysis; The Crazy Kamal Connection; etc]
Tags: Dialogues, Direction, Editing, Gallery, Medium, Production, Songwriting, Soundtrack, Special Effects, Tamil, Teaching Film-making, Theater, Video
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WB.. Wow.. Had never heard about Singeetham Sreenivas Rao.. Keep it coming.. very interesting
WB…really good…thanks…
- WB, thanks for this. Wonder when all his movies will come out with atleast English subtitles. Three of his movies that I’ve seen and loved were Michael Madana Kamarajan, Pushpak and Appu Raja.
must have heard of Pushpak *ing kamal hassan,directed by Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, … one of the greatest pictures ever made.
a movie with no dailogues.
Ohh Shit i should have IMDBed before i commented.. i too have seen MMKR(cult classic..didnt know the director though), Pushpak and Vichitra Sowdarulu..
- WB, You have just killed part of my afternoon as I haven’t heard of any of the actors or movies you mentioned in this post, but now I want to explore all of them. Except, my netflix queue hit 500 last week and now I will have to take the time to do some purging to make room for these!
Thank you for yet another list of recommendations!
-sumeet, VC, oz, vineeth, t!, oh T! honored! elated! and in spite of my smoke/drink ban .. really really intoxicated.
thanks WB for writing about this gifted craftsman..
he was equally at ease dealing mythologicals, historicals, biographies (mayuri), comic (many), and to top it all a silent movie “pushpaka vimanam” equally well known as “pushpak”
no surprise that pushpak was included in the best of the millenium list prepared by some foreign filmsite or magagine
there isn’t any genre he left untouched