Romance lives on…

Ravi Yadav talks about ‘Marocharitra' and love beyond borders.

Director Ravi Yadav on the sets of Marocharitra

Ravi Yadav was on a visit to the U.S. and while crossing Times Square, imagined how it would be to shoot a pathos song from Marocharitra against the famous landmark.

His imagination stemmed out of a keen eye for visuals as a cinematographer.

“For my first film as a director, I wanted a subject and screenplay that is locked. I wanted to tell a well-known story in my own way,” says the lens man who has done cinematography for

Race, Humraaz and

Socha Na Tha among other Bollywood hits. At the same time, he was toying with the idea of reincarnation. “I was imagining how the situations would turn out if the boy and girl were reborn and this they meet in the US,” he says. When she shared his wish of wanting to remake

Marocharitra , he was warned of the tough task of trying to recreate the magic of a legendary love story.

But he had made up his mind.

After getting the rights from director K. Balachander, he worked on the new Marocharitra , with a US-bred hero and a heroine who moves to the US with her family from Andhra Pradesh.

“The boy lives near the Niagara and that gives the cinematographer in me a lot of scope to get terrific visuals,” says Ravi.

The director is confident that the film will have its connect with the MTV generation. “This may be the age of Roadies and Splitsvilla but I know people who've stood by true love. The film is set in an alien land, but the idea of love and the emotions remain unchanged,” he states. Rather than language, it's the cultural difference that the families try to bridge here.

“The girl's mother comes from a village in Andhra Pradesh and finds it tough to accept that the girl is in love with a boy who's born and brought up in the US and not conversant with Telugu,” says the director and adds after a pause, “Parents being parents oppose. They feel their daughter cannot fall in love. After the denial come objection and the reason for it.”

Ravi wanted newcomers for the film but chose Varun Sandesh.

“Varun is US-bred and I felt that the language and mannerisms required for his role would come naturally to him,” he reasons.

After an audition, newcomer Anita was chosen as the heroine.

The supporting cast includes Prathap Pothan, Urvashi and Kota Srinivas Rao.

Marocharitra is just the first of experiments from Ravi Yadav. If the film does well, expect probable Hindi and Tamil remakes.

Having worked in regional industries as well, he is certain of being able to pull it off.