K Shivarudriah is an award–winning Kannada film director. His very first film, Chaitrada Chiguru, went on to win the Karnataka State Film Award in the Best Director category. He is known for making women–centric films and most of his works are based on books and have been critically acclaimed. Marikondavaru, directed by him, was chosen as the second best film by the Jury of Karnataka State Awards. He also directed films like Amasa, based on a short story with the same title. The film was screened in the Panorama Section of the International Film festival of India (IFFI) and also won the State Film Award.
Other films by Shivarudriah are Meghavarshini, Bhagavathi Kadu, Magiya Kala, Daatu (which won the Best depiction of a woman Award at the International Images Film festival for women in 20018 in Zimbabwe), Moodalaseemeliand Marikondavaru. His films have also been screened at various national and international film festivals.
The director goes back in time to share “some sweet and some bitter memories” he experienced during the making of his debut film Chaitrada Chiguru.
“In 1999, I decided to make Chaitrada Chiguru . It was my first film. Narrating this story is not about putting anyone down. But a true life incident of what we went through.
I started off by working with the Bengaluru Doordarshan news department. I learnt to make short films there. Even though I come from a theatre and photography background, I was not getting any opportunity to work as an associate director.
So, within the Doordarshan, I started making short films and started watching films keenly. My 30 years of working in theatre and my experience as photographer – all came in handy. Those skills helped me during my short filmmaking stint.
When I decided to make Chaitrada Chiguru , I found support in Gururaj, DP Raju and Loki as producers. But, none of us had any clue as to how the film industry works or what goes into production.
So we wanted to start with a small budget. Chaitrada Chiguru is about widow remarriage and also had a strong woman protagonist. We had three lakhs, and that was not enough. So, I decided to postpone the film. But everyone else around me were positive and told me to focus only on direction and not worry about the finances.
As I was also a photographer, I chose the months between December and February to make the film as you get the perfect lighting for a shoot during this time. The first choice was Ramesh Arvind, but he was beyond our budget. So we chose Kumar Bangarappa as the hero. He was known as an action hero, and my film changed that image of his with the mellow role we offered him. He was gracious and accepted. For the lead heroine we chose Kaveri, a Malayalam film actress.
We went to Thritahalli where the shooting of Kanooru Heggadithi was also going on. We were looking for a house loaded with flowers and we spotted the prettiest house, completely covered in blooms. There were at least a hundred varieties of flowers.
We approached the people living there and asked them if we could shoot the film in their house and they responded negatively with the fear that we would destroy their flowers.
After a lot of assurance and a promise that we will clean their home after pack–up everyday and not even pluck a single flower, they agreed. We put up only the actors in hotel rooms, so they could be comfortable and be fresh for the shoot. As for me and the crew, I rented a house for ₹5,000 so we could save up on money. I also hired a brilliant cook so the artistes could get good food.
We completed the shooting in 14 days with an additional six days for songs. We had to be careful about how the money was spent. Those days we had negatives and not digital technology. For a film we needed over a lakh feet of negatives, but I used just 18,000 feet for the two-hour film.
Once the shooting commenced, we had a bad experience with one of the artistes. She was chosen for the parallel role. We even had her costumes stitched for her and shot with her for two days. But, on the third day, she started crying for not been chosen to play the heroine. She wanted to leave the film. So she packed up and left as she felt she was being neglected and all the importance was given to Kaveri.
I let her go as we did not want to create a scene. But she went to the press and spoke ill about us. The press gave us a negative coverage and even went to extent of saying that we had stopped the shooting due to the crisis. I was heartbroken, but a local reporter encouraged me. So did my actors. They said I had to be prepared to face praise and flak if I was getting into the film industry. So with a greater determination we continued to shoot the film and replaced her character with another girl, who was cooperative. And we did not respond to the accusations made by the girl who left.
But, we had faced financial crisis all through. And were discreetly handling it. The actors had no clue what was going on behind the screens. Every evening, we would call friends and ask them to loan us ₹5,000 or ₹10,000 for the shoot. This became a daily routine.
As we had bought rations in bulk, food, stay and water was taken care of. But the things that needed daily payment was the one that became a torture for us. In spite, of all these things, the film developed in a beautiful manner with every shot.
Others film units working around us knew we were struggling everyday making the film. But I found a lot of encouragement from Vitthal Murthy. One day he came to the location and spent an entire day with us and we discovered that the people who had given us their home to shoot the film in were his relatives.
He told them not to charge me any money and let me use the house for free, because I was a new comer. Till date I remember his kindness. I am still grateful to him. We had agreed to pay them₹ 18,000 as rent for the house, but they flatly refused to take it from us.
This way every problem was getting solved on a daily basis. Finally, the film was complete and we had to settle hotel and diesel bills along with many other nitty gritties besides paying the crew members too.
And we had run out of cash. The crew members told me to pay them when possible. I was in tears. The hotel bill was ₹16,000 and the producer took me and some of our friends to a dark corner and asked us to handover our rings, chains and watches which he pawned and collected ₹20,000. We paid the hotel bill and remaining money we used for diesel and our commute back home. And, the rest is history.
As told to Shilpa Sebastian R
This column chronicles a filmmaker’s first efforts
