RGV Blog

I am posting the first look of ‘Rakht Charitra’ on some visuals cut on a theme song in here along with my take as a Director.

Director’s Note

This story is inspired from the life of Paritala Ravi from South India who was assassinated in January, 2005. Even though the actual incidents of the story happened and the related characters existed in South India, I decided to make it in Hindi because I strongly felt that the sheer uniqueness of the story deserves to be told to a much wider audience.

On the eve of the 35th anniversary of SHOLAY I ask myself this question.

Why is it that Sholay doesn’t age? It just seems to stand still at the “pause” button of a Cinematic era for the last 35 years without aging one bit and I won’t be surprised if it stays that way for still another 35 years if not another 70 years.

People might talk about ‘Mother India’ with respect but in their heart of hearts every cinegoer of the country knows that it’s ‘Sholay’ which is the actual Mother of Indian Cinema in every which way.

I took the last shot of ‘Rakht Charitra’ yesterday. From the inception of the idea of wanting to make ‘Rakht Charitra’ till the point of me taking the last shot was an incredible journey for both my mind the way it started perceiving and understanding the research material and then also how it studied the minds of the various involved parties. So a constant analysis and thereby a due course of me being psyched up by what kind of conclusive truths I have reached in various mental states of mine resulted in a situation that by the time I reached the last shot it made me truly believe that what I shot in Cinema is real and what happened in real was Cinema.

No one has ever been afraid to take a shower before 1960 until Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho turned a daily bathing ritual into a perfect setting for a murder. Even though the horror film turns 50 this year and inspite of us watching numerous films of the same genre it continues to remain in every film [...]

In Vijaywada when I was doing my engineering there were so many times when I used to stand in the line waiting to buy a ticket for the new Sridevi movie and I used to keep staring in awe at her on the hoardings in the theater compound. Her beauty and her sex appeal were [...]

It would be any Directors dream to have an Actor with a combination of intensity in facial expressions and a mind-blowing body to go with it. Most of the time there will be actors with good bodies but they can’t act and then there will be very good intense actors who cannot dare to take [...]

Nothing is more truer than that line from the “Idea” campaign which says “An idea can change your life”. My whole life and also my career as a Director is a living testimony of that truth both in positive and negative ways. It could range from a film like “Satya” coming from an Idea like [...]

I have always been asked this question regards to which actor surprised me the most that I have ever worked with and now I can say without a doubt that it is Surya. To elaborate on this answer I have to define first what the word ‘ACTOR’ means to me. Most people I know including [...]

Just posting some memoirs of my assistant director Siva Nageshwar Rao of his experiences with me during the making of “Shiva”. These he mailed me after he read my “Assistant to Assistant” article on this blog. “You used to repeatedly tell the story of  ‘Shiva’ to all us assistants, not just scene by scene but [...]

Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIbnwBwmSNk The song tune is inspired from one of my all time favourite pieces of music of the Italian composer Ennio Morricone. He did this theme for the film ‘Exorcist II: The Heretic’. Incidentally Morricone is also the composer for a great number of cult western themes including ‘The Good, the Bad and [...]