“Filmmaking has been the most popular medium of storytelling for more than a century now. I certainly believe filmmaking has more options to express a story to a larger audience than any other medium.
I was born in the city of Hanamkonda in Telangana. My dad was a Tahsildar in the revenue department. I went to a Boarding school (St. Gabriel’s High School, Kazipet) after my mother passed away when I was nine years old.
As a single parent, my dad encouraged me, my brother, and my sister to develop our interests along with education. I chose films!
Cinema was the only spectacular entertainment back in the ’80s when I was a child. In my opinion, it is not always a spectator watching a film, some films also watch the spectator carefully. In my life, 90% of the films I watched are those types. I felt those were made for me. So, whenever I watched a film, we both communicated with each other mutually. That’s where I thought I should be from both sides.
Having a good time in school, every day we used to have TV time to watch tv shows like ‘Bharath Ek Khoj’, ‘Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi’, ‘Tamas’ and cartoons like ‘Spiderman’ and ‘Mickey Mouse’. I had never missed a single episode indeed.
‘Yeh Jo Hain Zindagi’ serial was one of my favorite comedy shows. That inspired me to write a comedy play in school. I also directed and played an important role. I was 10 years old at that time. That play was a big hit. Our language arts teachers appreciated my writings in several school meetings. Also as part of education, our school used to screen many worldwide documentaries.
Whenever we get outing time, I preferred to go to a cinema hall. That’s how I became a fan of cinema. My close friend, Madhu, told me I can even write stories for movies. That’s where the story began. I started understanding the structure of the plot of any movie I watch. Like that, I narrated many stories to him, when we were playing soccer every evening. He remembers them more than I do. So, like that, I became a writer from when I was 10 years old. Apart from an inside storyteller, I have another version of me.
I started my own Web Designing shop after I graduated in Computer Science in 1997. I was my own successful boss.
Coming to the United States of America was a good fortune to me as part of my breadwinning job. Every time a bad economy comes, it warns or suggests one to have multiple professions to overcome such time. I have seen two economic recessions in my career. Every time I thought about those, I questioned myself: what is my second profession?
In 2011, I lost my father. To overcome the sorrow, I self-learned film making with the help of books and videos. My highest phase is when I implement my idea immediately. And the lowest phase is when I fail to implement what I want to do. Sometimes success also takes us down, if we cannot manage the success.
The biggest challenge in my career was switching professions. Many people have asked, “How do you manage this while doing the other one?”
Later I realized that having a second profession helps me to do better at my profession too.
There were many factors that led to the making of my first internationally acclaimed documentary ‘Chiseled’ which is based on the heritage and civilization of the Kakatiya Dynasty.
As I mentioned earlier, ‘Bharath Ek Khoj’ is my favorite TV series. It is a marvelous TV show about Indian Heritage. I was a little disappointed after watching the complete series because the show didn’t speak about the Kakatiya dynasty. Warangal is the most fascinating city of beautiful ancient structures by the Kakatiya dynasty. As it is my home town, I collected a lot of memories of visiting the temples and the ancient structures and drafted a documentary. That’s ‘Chiseled.’
I never expected that it would win that many awards. I am glad that so many people around the world liked the award-winning documentary from places like Hungary, Italy, USA. When I visited Rome in Italy last year, I met a polish couple there. They said they had already watched ‘Chiseled’ and liked it a lot. I felt so happy after hearing that.
When it comes to my upcoming feature film ‘Metanoia,’ it connects the true events of Mahatma Gandhi’s life. This story took almost 30 years for me to draft it. It is a tremendous experience for me as a director. The experience is like finding one of your childhood exams corrected answer sheets now.
Everyone in the crew and cast felt like ‘Bapu’ was around us. The principal photography happened in 2019 and the entire film was shot in the United States of America.
It’s not just going to be a cast and crew experience but I guarantee that the audience will experience the same.
The film is all set to release on the 2nd of October on the occasion of the 151st birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. After ‘Metanoia’, I am working on a mythological fiction plot. It is all about a hidden temple and space-time.
Finally, I just want to say one thing to all the aspiring filmmakers. If they really want to succeed in their career, they should start implementing their ideas in any available medium. All great ideas were successful, only when they were implemented. I always believe “TRYING” is more powerful than “I TRIED.”