This time it is an advocate from Siddipet who has given up his career to make movies. Govardhan Reddy more familiar as Govi shot to fame with his short film Drishti in 2004, at a time when people hardly paid attention to short films. Drishti a film on domestic workers, was screened at Ravindra Bharati on May Day. He recalls, “There was no Youtube those days. I made it in on a shoe-string budget (Rs.10,000) and wanted to send it to film festivals. The NDW (National Domestic Workers) union bought the film hoping it would reach the actual people. The one-hour long film was telecast on DD national. NDW has organisations in 18 states and everywhere they screened it, they would invite me as a chief guest I was called to Mumbai, Jharkand and other places too. I enjoyed the trips; it was also the first time I boarded a flight. Drishti was Telangana based, had sub titles but I couldn’t send it to film festivals,” recalls Govardhan, who continued to make documentaries and ad films even as he did his LLB and worked as an assistant director.
Ask him if he used Drishti as a medium to join mainstream cinema and he says, “It was about social consciousness, I took their real life stories and did the movie. For commercial films, it is a different set up.
Govardhan Drishti also introduced cinematographer P.G. Vinda, Vivek and many other technicians. He then worked with director Surender Reddy for Mahesh Babu-starrer Athidhi as a script writer and then moved in as an associate director. The two worked together till Oosaravelli , and then Govi began trials to make his feature film.
I Love You Bangaram for K.S. Rama Rao was his first project. Now his horror comedy bilingual (Telugu-Tamil) film Nayaki starring Trisha has just been wrapped. Drishti He says, “I was good at script writing, it took time for me to transform as a commercial, formula writer.”
The director is a die-hard fan of Trisha and he had her in mind while writing the story of Nayaki . The heroine needs to be 30 years old but should look 18. “When I narrated the story, Trisha was impressed. Sushma plays a crucial role and I am introducing Satyam Rajesh as a hero in both Tamil and Telugu. Ganesh Venkatraman plays the male lead. Brahmanandam plays a comedian from the film industry who is frustrated with the kind of template and routine movies being made. It is a small budget film but due to Trisha’s presence, there was hype and we hiked the budget. We brought qualified technicians from Mumbai to give her a unique make up and styling and she lost weight by three kilos.”
