“V ivaha bhojanambu.. vintaina vantakammu, …. oho ho ho naake mundu… ” Songs from super-hit films are evergreen and the magic of cinema has no comparison. If there is one thing Hyderabadis love more than their Irani Chai it is cinema and their stars. The hub of the Telugu Film industry Tollywood , Hyderabad's affair with cinema has been long standing.
The Hyderbad Diary 2012 has been ideated to be a tribute to the 75 years of the Telugu film industry through rare and colourful posters, focussing on its effect Tollywood on Hyderabad. In the three years that Priyankaa was away from the city, memories of the city kept hounding her, “I am a true-blue Hyderabadi and I was missing the city so much. Abroad you have pillow covers and fridge magnets that remind you of home, in India we don't have much; things are looking up now but I thought through this diary maybe we can keep a little bit of home with us and take it everywhere.
Compiling pictures for the diary was a very challenging task, says Priyankaa. “We initially wanted to pictorially showcase the city painted by the glamour of the film industry, but there wasn't much we could shoot, so Sandeep Gunnam, the filmmaker and I changed the concept and decided to put in posters — past to present.”
Priyankaa says that the old film posters were very rare to find and that she didn't want to depend on the internet. “It was very tough to find posters. As a last resort we had to scan DVD jackets. The younger generation however is more eager to preserve and archive the work of their forefathers.”
Was Priyankaa afraid of missing out on some films? She says that a lot of people asked her why they had missed out on some films and why they included some. Priyankaa asserts that the concept was to only feature the top grosser films. “We live in times when the hero is the story, so we wanted to go according to that theme,” she says .
The text in the diary has been provided by filmmaker Sandeep Gunnam. Art has been done by Syed Ali Arif while the detailed snippets and captions have been given by Deepthi Pendurty and photographs have been taken by Lakshmi Prabhala, Madhavi Kuram, Nandana Bommareddy. Make it your own
The Hyderabad Diary 2012 is available at Walden, Inhabit at GVK Mall, Kalakriti Art Gallery and many other stores. It is priced at Rs. 350. For more details contact: 040-24732583, 24655598 or or e-mail:
milaphyd@gmail.com.
