| Bapu | |
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Bapu at his early career |
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| Born | Sattiraju Lakshminarayana December 15, 1933 Narsapur, India |
Bapu (born Sattiraju LakshmiNarayana (Telugu: సత్తిరాజు లక్ష్మీనారాయణ) on December 15, 1933) is an Indian film director, known for his works in Telugu cinema [1] and Hindi Cinema. He is a music artist, painter, cartoonist, and designer.
Bapu's directorial venture saakshi was showcased at 'Tashkent film festival' in 1968.[2] Seetha Kalyanam was screened at the BFI London Film Festival and Chicago International Film Festival in 1978. [3] Tyagayya (1981 film) was showcased at the Indian Panorama of International Film Festival of India in 1982[4] Bapu's 2011 film Sri Rama Rajyam had a special screening at International Film Festival of India on November 28, 2011[5]
He has also directed Bollywood films like Hum Paanch, Seeta Swayamvar, Anokha Bhakt, Bezubaan, Woh Saat Din, Pyari Behna, Mohobbat, Mera Dharam, Diljala and Prem Pratigya. He has also directed a Tamil film Neeti Devan Mayagugiran.[6]
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Bapu was born in Narsapur, West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, India in a Niyogi family. He was graduated with a degree in Law from the University of Madras in 1955. He worked as a political cartoonist for the newspaper Andhra Patrika in 1945.
Bapu introduced a painting style of simple bright colors. His unique style consisted of economy of strokes, freehand drawing and a lack of background clutter.
His paintings focus on Hindu mythological characters, and he has painted the Hindu epic Ramayana as a pictorial story. His character portrayals, such as Shiva, Bhima, Duryodhana, look distinctly male with wide chests, large jaws and large biceps; while Krishna and Rama are more feminine in build. All his female characters have doe eyes, a waist-hip ratio of 0.7, voluptuous breasts, long hair and a sharp nose. The phrase Bapu Bomma ("Bapu's painting") has become synonymous with a beautiful Telugu girl. Another character called Rendu Jadala Seetha ("Seetha with two plaits") became a synonym for any girl wearing her hair in two plaits.
Bapu has also introduced a new style of cursive writing in Telugu. The font is his own handwriting and reflects the same simplicity as his art.
Bapu paintings also decorated the cover pages of many magazines in India and Abroad. Telugu Naadi Magazine published from USA for Telugu audience have published Bapu's great paintings. Bapu also later served on their advisory board to guide and have an outstanding content for the magazine that catered to Telugu people.
The most notable achievement in Bapu's movie making is his success in capturing the nativity of the Telugu people and translating it into visuals. His movies center on realistic family issues and relationships, however his recurring theme is magic realism, with vignettes of mythological characters aiding in the narration.
Most of his movies have a female protagonist; a breakaway style from the formulaic movies that relegate female lead characters to song and dance numbers. His penchant for preserving the Telugu nativity in his movies can be seen in the choice of artists, especially the dusky female leads and weak villains.
Bapu met Mullapudi Venkataramana in 1942 in P.S. High School, Madras. They studied there in standards V and VI and then continued schooling at Kesari High School.Ramana’s first short story 'Amma Maata Vinakapothe' was published in 1945 in 'Bala', a children's magazine published by Radio Annayya (Nyayapathi Raghava Rao),he was 14 then. Bapu illustrated the story. That was the beginning of their career as a writer-producer -illustrator- filmmaker duo”.
Started as an illustrator-story writer team and then turning into a film-director-writer duo, they have contributed immensely to the enrichment of Telugu cultural ethos through literature and cinema. When one mentions Bapu, then one is bound to mention Ramana's name too and vice versa.
The most notable achievement in his movie making is his success in capturing the nativity of Telugu people and translating it great on-screen visuals. When ever the renowned duo of Bapu and Ramana come together for a project, viewers expect a spectacular visual of nativity with a equally enthralling storyline.
Their mythological ventures like 'Sampoorna Ramayanam', 'Ramanjaneya Yuddham', 'Seetha Kalyanam' have been the milestones of Telugu cinema, while historical films like 'Thyagayya', 'Bhakta Kannappa' , 'Sree natha kavisarvabhouma' have been hugely successful. Bapu-Ramana combination has created movie magic on the large screen with some of the path breaking films in Telugu cinema and are ever remembered for films like 'Radha kalyanam', 'Velugu needalu', 'Bharyabharthalu','Bhogimanta', 'Mutyala muggu', 'Sakshi', 'Mr. Pellam', 'Pelli pustakam', 'Manavoori Pandavulu' which gave stardom to many budding actors of those days, most prominent being Krishna, Krishnam Raju, Chiranjeevi and Ravu Gopalarao.
The duo worked together for almost 50 films, most of them being very popular with the Telugu cine goers.
He worked with Satyam Sankaramanchi and drew 101 pictures for each of the stories in Amaravati Kathalu. Bapu is one-half of the Bapu-Ramana (Mullapudi Venkata Ramana) pair that made movies in Telugu cinema. Ramana provided an able foil, providing script and dialogue to suit Bapu's visuals.
Bapu collaborated with Ramana to give life to Ramana's child prodigy character Budugu in the form of appealing caricatures.
కొంటె బొమ్మల బాపు KonTe Bommala Bapu, కొన్ని తరముల సేపు Konni Tharamula Sepu, గుండె ఊయలలూపు Gunde OOyala-loopu, ఓ కూనలమ్మ O Koonalammaa.
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