My foray into film making started off with Aa Dinagalu . It was a film based on the book Daadaagiriya Dinagalu by Agni Shridhar. He wanted me to direct it. I was around 22-23 years old at that time and not confident about making a film. So we decided to rope in KM Chaitanya to direct it and I assisted him. That was a significant experience for me.
Slum Bala became my first directorial venture. I approached Duniya Vijay with a story and asked him to make it into a film as I felt the subject was powerful and he would suit the role. He turned the table around and said, ‘I will act in the film only if you direct it.’ That is how Slum Bala happened. Now here I was in my twenties with a film that would become my baby completely. The subject was heavy. It had politics, dadagiri , life in slums, police stations and they were all intertwined intricately. The cinema also travels from Bengaluru to Mumbai and back. For me , it was a do-or-die situation. It was Slum Bala that gave me a name and a foothold in the film industry.
The challenge for me was being a woman. We had to visit narrow bylanes and gullies for the shoot, police stations, slums as these were the main locations for the shoot. Directing a film with the whole unit and travelling with the whole team to another state was also a challenge. It is easy to get things done in your own state. But elsewhere, it was a real test for me to see that the shooting went smoothly. The other challenge was working with big names, the finest actors and the crew. How I handle them and communicate with them was important too. That is when my training in Aa Dinagalu helped.
The other brain teaser was when and where to include the background score as I use very few songs in my films. So the background music had to be used intelligently. Next was working on the editing table. The thought that troubled me constantly was ‘will the film end up the same way I had shot? Or, will it turn out to be something else?’. That is where I believe my journalistic and editing skills came in.
I am grateful that people too welcomed me when I was a newcomer. Soon it was followed by Edegarike -- which truly gave me my identity. It was called a ‘cult classic’, by Ram Gopal Varma, who went on to add that I portrayed the characters from a woman’s point of view. In that, he said that the film made the audience weep both for the killer and the killed. Agni Sridhar also said that the film would have turned out very differently and would have missed the sensitive nuances if a man had made it. These are the biggest compliments for me.
I was successful. Yet, I say each film was made differently. Cinema is a beautiful world. Being a journalist built my personality, cinema gave me the recognition and the lyricist brought out the poet in me. It has been a good journey.
As told to Shilpa Sebastian R.
