In 2015, when Prashant Manchikanti visited Hamburg, Germany, to showcase photographs tracing the journey of cinema in Hyderabad as part of India Week 2015, director S S Rajamouli’s Baahubali — The Beginning had just released. “The film had also opened in Hamburg and was running to a packed house,” he recalls.
It made him understand, even more, how big the Telugu cinema culture is. Not that he was a stranger to it. In the months preceding the photo exhibition in Hamburg, he had been documenting the vanishing single screen theatres in Hyderabad, people who make the tall cut-outs that adorn theatres and the studios. He was witness to the frenzy at ticket counters when a big film releases, and this included Baahubali .
Prashant was commissioned to narrate visually, Hyderabad’s story of cinema for an exhibition curated by Kinemathek Hamburg, Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad and Film and TV Museum, Hamburg. Prashant photographed old cinema halls like Shanti at Narayanaguda, Santosh and Sapna in Abids and Yakut Mahal in Yakutpura, Old City. “Multiplexes are fast replacing single screens. The old cinema halls had unique architecture,” he points out.
As part of his research, Prashant went back in time to track the first steps of the Telugu film industry as it transitioned to Hyderabad from Chennai (then Madras). “I wrote to National Film Archive of India, Pune, and other organisations. I was at a loss to find a poster of the first Telugu film to be completely filmed in Hyderabad, Maa Inti Mahalakshmi (1959),” he says.
After a circuitous search, Prashant found the poster in actress Jamuna’s house. “She has a well-maintained archive and was gracious enough to share her experiences. Jamuna had had a few flops prior to this film and the team was a worried lot, swimming against the tide and with the pressure of shooting in Hyderabad. For any small thing they needed for the shooting, they’d have to run to Madras,” says Prashant.
Prashant traces the industry’s growth in Hyderabad from the setting up of Sri Sarathi Studios to Annapurna Studios and Ramoji Film City. His attempt was to narrate the evolution of Telugu cinema through 24 photographs. “An entire industry is dependant on cinema. The 40ft cut-outs we see in some theatres are made by hand,” says Prashant.
He also captured the frenzy at ticket counters where tussles break out when big films comes along. Prashant’s images were juxtaposed with archival material that focussed on cinema in Germany from 1950s to 70s from ‘Film-und Fernsehmuseum Hamburg’, coordinated by Hauke Hatzelhoffer. “It was a jugalbandi in Hamburg, if I may call it that,” says Prashant.
Prashant’s photographs titled ‘The Magic of Cinema’ will be showcased in Goethe Zentrum Hyderabad in July this year.
