The Age Of Heroes: The Incredible World of Telugu Cinema

‘At that point, I saw a crowd outside a hair salon, talking about Hero Pawan Kalyan who had just arrived. I obviously wanted to see him, so I joined the crowd. Pawan Kalyan took the time to talk to almost all of us who were there. Imagine that. He spoke to all of us. When he saw me, he placed his hand on my shoulder and asked me my name. When I tol

Gollapudi Maruthi Rao, whose plays have been part of curriculum for students of Masters in Telugu, was permanently reduced to a supporting artist.

Telugu has, instead, been reduced to political activism through movements, such as the Madiga Dandora movement, which aimed to unify the Madiga caste (the lowest amongst the caste hierarchies).

He was the first half of a trio of writers called ‘kavithraya’ (The Trinity of Poets).

In their hands, the story-writing commandment of ‘the world changes the character’ is inverted and becomes ‘the character changes the world’.

The Telugu literature produced during this period stagnated at upper-caste levels. A particular caste-based literary conflict that remains unresolved is the ‘language’ that qualifies as literature itself.

Reddy surname can be confusing, because all Reddys are not ‘Reddy’, i.e., there are those with the surname don’t necessarily belong to the caste.

The Brahmins had found a director in K. Vishwanath, who made great sensitive films that had rounded protagonists.

Every casting decision in this film reeked of foolishness at that time. The film also featured the debuts of two male actors: Sivamani, the drummer, who plays an African American, and Thomas Jane, who would later star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997).