Fresh lease of life for village life

Shyam Prasad | NT

It was a star-studded re-launch event. After five years, Gramayana, a village-based story starring Vinay Rajkumar was re-launched at a temple in Bengaluru last weekend.

Upendra, Ashwini Puneeth Rajkumar, Raghavendra Rajkuamar, Duniya Vijay, Dhruva Sarja, Raj B Shetty, R Chandru, Pawan Wadeyar, Simple Suni and other Sandalwood celebrities were part of the occasion.

The film had its first muharat in October 2018. Shooting was held for nearly four weeks in Chikkamagaluru under the direction of debutant director Devanur Chandru. But differences between the director and producer saw the film being shelved despite a positive response from fans.

The film now has a new pair of producers. G Manoharan and KP Sreekanth, who are also bankrolling Upendra’s directorial comeback, are backing Gramayana now.

“This is a film based entirely in a village. I met Vinay Rajkumar at the wedding of Simple Suni and I was immediately convinced that he was the best person to play the role of ‘Sixth Sense Seena’, the protagonist of Gramayana.

He loved the story at the first narration. The story is still fresh and gives a distinct look into village life. I am grateful to producers Manoharan and KP Sreekanth for their support,” director Devanur Chandru said.

Ensemble Cast It is not just the guest list at the muharat that was starstudded. Chandru said the film too has an ensemble cast.

“We are shooting for the film in Chikkamagaluru, Devarayasamudra, Arasikere, Kaduru and a few other places. The cast includes Achyuth Kumar, Gopalkrishna Deshpande, Arun Sagar, Aparna, Seeta Kote, Sreenivas Prabhu and Manjunath Hegde. Yasashwin Anchan is the cinematographer while Poornachandra Tejaswi is our composer,” he said.

A new poster of the film was released at the re-launch. Vinay Rajkumar, speaking at the occasion said, “What is village life in the point of view of today’s youth is the subject of the film which director Chandru has managed to capture aptly in the story. This is a kind of character I never had the opportunity to essay in my career so far. I am thankful to the producers for bringing this film back on track.” KP Sreekanth said that he watched the teaser of Gramayana while on the sets of Upendra’s UI.

“I read several responses to the teaser from the audience. All of them were extremely positive. I felt sad that such a good attempt had stopped. So I joined hands with Lahari Films to restart the venture,” Sreekanth said.

Lahari Velu, one of the directors of Lahari Music, said, “I have heard a song from this film and it was impressive. I am happy to see that my brother (Manoharan) and Sreekanth are now producing this film.