A Guerrilla’s Prasthanam into Panorama by Deva Katta

Premise….
When we were titling our film Prasthanam (journey), we never dreamt it would become an apt description of our own journey as ‘guerrilla filmmakers’ into Indian Panorama from the days of browsing idlebrain during office hours, analyzing films at weekend parties….and all the way to shaking hands with influential filmmakers in and international arena. Amidst a full-house international crowds during the screening at IFFI, it struck to us that Prasthanam was more of ours (Prasthanam team’s) than the very characters Loki, Mithra or Chinna portrayed in the film.

It was a moment of looking back at our struggles from the inception of this journey towards this unexpected milestone. Though I am still an innocent baby filmmaker struggling to find my own space in Telugu cinema, I would like to share this short back story of my short travel so far with fellow film enthusiasts….

A Guerrilla’s Prasthanam….

Growing up in Chennai as a teenager, it’s hard to escape the influences of greats like K. Balachandar, Mahendran, K. Bhagya Raj, Bharathee Raja and Mani Rathnam who struck a beautiful balance between classic story-telling and wider mass appeal. When I was struck by the thunderbolts Nayagan, Agni Natchathiram and Shiva as a boy, the impact of a director was enlightening. It never occurred to me to pursue film career until college days….obviously the profession was damned by everyone due to the low success rate.

While living independently in USA, I’ve consolidated my interests into a serious ambition and started taking little steps towards the goal while doing a day job as Mechanical Engineer in Motor City.

Every little step lead to a bigger next step and it all started in 1999 with a Panasonic mini-dv consumer camera, during weekends in Detroit winters….

My first amateur work was a docu-feature called Valasa which was produced by a close friend called Sachi. All the actors were colleagues and roommates while Sachi and myself acted as cameramen and editors. We shot Valasa for almost a year as and when we found time away from work, partying and going behind girls...

What matters is not what we know in theory but what we don’t know in practice!

The next step was a fourteen minute short film ‘the people mover’ which garnered some accolades in local film festivals and boosted my confidence in taking the next big step – a simple romantic comedy feature called ‘Vennela’.

The success of Vennela is attributed to all those 32 investor friends who bet more on my commitment than the promise of my business plan. Sachi and myself went through enormous pains to execute the project as we hardly had 10-15 crew members on the sets.

That was a real guerrilla execution to think back.…

Later Prasthanam happened four years after Vennela (please refer to my article ‘The Prasthanam of Prasthanam’ on idlebrain) and the result is –

We are connected with Tollywood! This is where our crawl ends and the walk begins!

My first tribute for Prasthanam goes to producer Ravi Vallabhaneni who wanted to make a film with a story and not just with a star - of course a big star in a convincing story always makes it magnificent! The pains of execution within a safe budget was greatly handled by Vijay and Vasu Vallabhaneni.

At IFFI, Goa….

Prasthanam was screened on November 27th, 28th and 29th at IFFI with a final screening slated for December 2nd on the finale. Sharwanand, Sai Kumar, Sundeep Kishan, music director Mahesh Shankar, editor Dharmendra and myself attended the screening on 27th followed by an evening cocktail party – Yes, I really felt like a guerrilla lost in a fish market but thanks to those few known faces who rescued me in time at the party.

Apart from the screening and the formal party, Goa was a blast fun with sleepless partying all three days, enjoyed every moment to the best...

Going forward….

Any ‘commercial cinema’ has some level of honesty and character reflecting the sense of life and belief system of a society weather it is comedy, romance, drama, musical or action. With every new film, every responsible filmmaker tries to shred part of what he has done before and aspires to do something he hasn’t done. The one thing we would never want to renounce is the honesty, logic and reason behind the core thought… without which we would be a dead meat to enjoy any reward…..

It’s a continuous struggle to break away from the dogma of stereotyped escapism and make it to the list of filmmakers who are commercially bankable with quality content.

Going forward with the third film, my ambition is to figure a way towards that list so long as I’m capable of making films.

‘Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding to the limits of your life’

With that, the sweet struggle towards a new expression begins, all over again!