Adoor’s film adjudged best feature film Mani...is a story of live-in relationship Tollywood, Kollywood score over Bollywood in new Lok Sabha
Orupennum Randanum, a film based on four short stories of famous writer Thakazhi, produced and directed by well-known film maker Adoor Gopalakrishnan was adjudged the best feature film in the Kerala State Film Awards 2008.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan also got the best director and script writer awards for the same film while Bhoomi-Malayalam directed by T. V. Chandran bagged the second best film award.
Lal got the best actor award for his role as a policeman in Thalapavu, a film based on a naxalite and Priyanka was selected for best actress for her role in Vilapangalkapuram, a film about a girl’s sufferings at the hands of religious extremists.
Aryadan Shoukat was adjudged best story writer for his work Vilapangalkapuram. Shanker Mahadevan was selected as best playback singer for his song in Madambi while Manjeri got the best playback singer (female) award. Best lyricist was O.N.V.Kurup and best music director M Jayachandran for his work in Madambi. State Minister for Education and Culture M. A. Baby announced the awards at a press meet in Thiruvnanthapuram on June 3 along with jury chairman Girish Kasaravalli. A total of 27 films were considered for the awards. The best film award carried a prize money of Rs 2 lakh, while the best director will get Rs 1 lakh and citation.
Director Gauri Karekar-Sarwate has completed a bilingual film titled Mani Mangalsutra, which is based on a real-life story of live-in relationship and its legalities. The movie is set in the sixties when such a relationship was a social taboo and had no legal or social sanctity.
The late advocate Supriya Sarwate was known for taking up unusual cases and helping women in distress. A regular writer for the Loksatta and the Indian Express, many of her cases are published as short stories. One such story, Mangalsutra, has now been made into a feature film, titled Mani Mangalsutra.
It is about a woman who lived with a man for more than three decades without the sanctity of marriage. The man gives her everything; they had joint bank account, ration card. Even most of the neighbours in the chawl where they resided, accepted her. But for inexplicable reasons he could not marry her. After the man dies, the landlord wants to evict the woman as she is not his legally wedded wife. How she fights and wins forms the crux of the story.
Gauri Karekar-Sarwate, chief assistant to Punkuj Parashar, is the daughter-in-law of the late Supriya Sarwate. Hrishitaa Bhatt plays the protagonist in the film along with Ravindra Mankani.
It was stars galore in the new Lok Sabha too as in the previous House – but this time film actors from Bengal and Tamil Nadu appeared to have scored over their Bollywood counterparts.
Yesteryear’s actress Jaya Prada, who has returned for another term as a Samajwadi Party MP after winning a bitterly fought election from Rampur, took oath as a member of the House on June 2.
Several cinestars from Tollywood and south India have come to the new House to take their place – ‘Lady Amitabh’ Vijay Shanti, Tamil actor K Sivakumar and Bengali filmstars Tapas Pal and Shatabdi Roy are prominent among them.
