Mani Shankar

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Mani Shankar is a Bollywood director. He is an alumnus of BITS Pilani and today he runs his own production house called Bhairav Films which produces short and documentary films, music videos, and, corporate films.

He has three children Bhairav (after whom he named his company), Rohini, and Prem. He prefers to work from his studio cum residence in Hyderabad. He started off his film career with Telugu serials for Doordarshan and then directed music videos which received repeated airplay on Indian radio stations. He is best known for his direction of popular Hindi films like 16 December, Rudraksh, and, Tango Charlie.

[edit] Biography

Mani Shankar was born as Shankar Mani, on August 3, 1957 in Guntur. His father, Ganesh Venkata Subra Mani, was a renowned scholar from Andhra University.

Mani Shankar was a student of the Hyderabad Public School. He then went to BITS Pilani, where he graduated with honors as a Chemical Engineer. He then joined his father's medicine factory. Later he took other jobs such as dynamite fishing and brick-making along with his brother. He then married Subbalakshmi Shankar and started production companies called Bhairav Films, Rohini Films, and, Shankar Films, along with his brother. Under these production houses he made Telugu serials for Doordarshan such as Tenali Ramkrishna among others. The serials became a critical and financial success. In 1988 his first son, Bhairav, was born.

Mani Shankar and his brother eventually parted ways. Later he shut down all his production houses but the most successful one: Bhairav Films.

Mani Shankar's rise to fame came he served under the former Indian Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao as his personal media advisor. During this period he gained a lot of experience and fame as an editor. Mani Shankar was also a journalist for the United Nations. On May 9, 1990 his daughter Rohini Shankar was born.

After this Mani Shankar took up making music videos. He made a series of them for Coca-Cola, called Meri Jaan Hindustan, which had a mixture of music from many different singers from various parts of India. It soon became a hit and Mani Shankar was on his steady climb to fame.

His second son, Prem Dutta Shankar, was born on the December 18, 1995. He then began making corporate films. In the midst of all this he made a presentation for President Bill Clinton when he visited India and received letters of praise from the latter in recognition of his work on the presentation. He also worked on a video presentation for President George W. Bush when he came to Hyderabad in 2006, which was very well received.

He then made his first feature film called 16 December for iDream Productions following it with Rudraksh and Tango Charlie for Nitin Manmohan. He was awarded an Honorary Rotary Award and a gold Nandi Award for his Screenplay in the film Manishi. He also won two bronze Nandi Awards for his direction.

Currently he is working on a new venture called Mukhbir, which stars Sameer Dattani, Om Puri, Suniel Shetty

[edit] Filmography