The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : ‘Telugu films could have won more awards’

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 15, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

‘Telugu films could have won more awards’

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: The year 2008 is a watershed for aesthetic films in Telugu since the industry achieved a rare distinction of bagging three national awards, according to Vasiraju Prakasam, Member of Jury – 2008.

On the flip side, however, is the Telugu film industry’s apathy towards sending entries for the national film awards. Only 11 entries were submitted for this year’s awards. “If producers had entered more films, we would have won more awards,” Mr. Prakasam, said in an interview here on Saturday. He pointed out that only 40 to 50 each of Bengali and Malayalam films were made every year. Yet, they bagged a good number of the 57 awards in the feature, non-feature film and documentary film categories. Telugu film releases, in contrast, number 120 a year, second only to 175 films in Hindi.

He is pleased that three totally different films — ‘Hope’ (best film on social issues), ‘Kittu’ (animation film) and ‘Kamli’ (best regional film) — were chosen by the jury out of 172 awards in all categories and languages. What delights him is that 70-year-old film-maker D. Rama Naidu played the lead role in the film which sends out a strong message against suicides. It was produced by Policherla Venkata Subbaiah and directed by K. Satyanarayana. Equally satisfying for him is the award for ‘Kittu’ (producer K. Bhargava, director Satya, and animator Kodavanti Bharaj) as it shows that an animation film in Telugu has attained national stature.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh