Engrossing fare
IT'S AROUND 1 p.m. The location is an upper middle class house set at Ramanaidu Studios in Nanakramguda. In the small lawn outside the house actor Venkatesh is seen listening to a song on his walkman.
Filmmaker Muppalaneni Siva steps out of the house in a hurry, has a brief animated conversation with his hero and disappears into the house set. We follow suit.
The shooting for a song sequence for Super Good Films, "Sankranthi," produced by R.B.Chowdary is in progress. The last time the three - the banner, the director and the hero were together was for that super hit, "Raja."
"Like `Raja' this movie too is in the feel good genre," says the soft-spoken director. There was no trace of a choreographer. "It is a director's song," Siva pauses for a while and then continues, "That means I am choreographing it," he smiles. "The theme is about an upper middle class joint family. Sarada and Chandramohan play the parents. Like in real life, little misunderstandings occur. In one such instance, the mother (Sarada) is upset over the behaviour of her children. And the children decide to placate her and bring smile back on her face. So they break into a song. Venkatesh plays the responsible elder brother. Srikanth, Siva Balaji and Sarvanand play his younger brothers. Like his earlier roles in "Chanti" and "Raja," this role too would enhance Venkatesh's image."
Emotional feel
Venkatesh by then finishes listening to the stanzas he had to `sing' in that song. "Basically it is nice to work in these kind of films as they have an emotional feel that we see every day at home."
"Compared to the general fast paced action films and youthful romantic ones, this role is a little matured kind with scope to showcase another dimension of one's acting prowess."
"I am supposed to have that kind of image too with the audience you know," he smiles and adds, "I get that kind of feed back from my fans and admirers. They keep saying `do these kind of roles too like in "Raja" and "Suryavamsam"."
"It is a kind of encouragement for me to accept such meaningful characters apart from high voltage commercial action flicks. It is after a long time I am working in a story that revolves around joint family.
Parents, siblings and their spouses the affections these kind of emotions are involved in the theme. I enjoy working in such simple clean entertainers and it is nice to be working with so many actors each day."
"And this song appears first in the lineage of six melodies and has lot of montage shots. On the whole, it is a clean film sans vulgarity or violence that most audiences especially the woman audience and the families are waiting for."
He says it is a joint venture with his parent company Suresh Productions as partner. He has two heroines.
"Arthi Agarwal comes in the first half and Sneha shares the second half of the film with me. Sangeetha plays Srikanth's wife. Rathi plays Siva Balaji's spouse. You can call it a mini multi starrer," smiles Venky .
S.A. Rajkumar, who scores music for this film will be reaching a milestone with the film - this will be his 150th film.
"Like the festival, "Sankranthi" brings joie de vivre. In addition is the tag line - `Love your family.' You will love the film too," says a confident Chowdhury.
M.L. NARASIMHAM
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