Dinakar Thoogudeepa’s new directorial venture Life Jote Ondhu Selfie , starring Prajwal Devaraj, Prem Kumar and Haripriya in the lead, with Sudha Rani in a pivotal role, releases on August 24. The film, the script for which is written by Dinakar’s wife Manasa, revolves around the friendship between a mother and her son.
Dinakar says the film is a totally different genre from his earlier works. “ Jothe Jotheyalli was a love story, Navagraha a thriller and Saarathi an action film. I don’t like to repeat myself or my style of narration,” shares the young director, adding, “This film talks about life and just because there are two heroes, it is not a love triangle either.”
Life Jothe Ondu Selife , he shares, is inspired from life itself. “Whether we are happy or sad, memories flip past your eyes as a flashback. When troubles come, we tend to focus only on them, forgetting the good. I feel troubles too will go away with time. Lifegives you a solution and takes you through them. That is why the title, Life Jothe Ondu Selfie... why not take a selfie with life itself?,” asks Dinakar, who also came up with an out-of-the-box method to promote this film.
“We created a WhatsApp group and asked people to take selfies with the film’s title and post it on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages. They also had to share the images with the film’s WhatsApp number,” beams the director. This promotion saw 32,000 people participate in the ‘Selfie Challenge’ promotion, including celebrities like Shivarajkumar, Darshan and Sudeep, to name a few.
Dinakar, the son of yesteryear actor, the late Srinivas Thoogudeepa, and brother of Darshan, has earlier directed films like Saarathi and Navagraha , featuring his brother.
Does he ever plan to resurrect any of his father’s films? “Not as of now. My father never produced any films so I do not have the rights to any of his films.
If ever I do, I will definitely give it a thought.”
Dinakar also gives complete credit to his father for “sowing the seeds of direction” in his head. “I was close to him. Our tastes were similar. We loved cricket and would wake up at the crack of dawn to watch the Indian team play. Just as he would explain the game to me as a child, he explained the nuances of cinema to me. We would watch films together and he would explain how a scene was originally shot, how it was edited and how different it looked on the screen. Ever since, I dreamt of being a director,” he reveals, adding that coming from a filmy background did not deter him from facing challenges in the industry.
“As children, when we accompanied our father to shoots, we were treated differently. When we lost him in ’95, I was still studying. When I came in to the industry in 2000, everything had changed,” recalls Dinakar, who started off as a light man with Venus Outdoor Unit. “I learnt what 10 lights meant, why a thermocol was used, what is a reflection and how to cut it... I wanted to learn everything,” he says, tracing his journey to assistant cameraman and finally director. “My father always told me that an actor should be aware of how a camera works, moves and captures.
The camera is the route through which we reach people. I worked in nine films as a cameraman, with BC Gowrishankar.”
Soon, Dinakar shifted gears and became an associate director with MS Ramesh before branching out independently as a director with Jothe Jotheyalli .
On his future projects, he says, “I do not plan anything. I never planned my films... but let life take its course. I hate to repeat myself, so I take time before plunging,” laughs the director.
