Sankarabharanam

Sankarabharanam (in Telugu శంకరాభరణం) is a 1980 Indian Telugu-language musical drama film written and directed by K. Viswanath. Produced by Edida Nageswara Rao under the production company Poornodaya Movie Creations, Sankarabharanam starred J. V. Somayajulu, Manju Bhargavi, Chandra Mohan, and Rajyalakshmi. The soundtrack was composed by K. V. Mahadevan and remained a chartbuster. The film throws light on the chasm between Classical and Western Music based on the perspective of people from two different generations. Sankarabharanam won the Prize of the Public at the "Besançon Film Festival of France" in the year 1981. It was screened at the 8th International Film Festival of India, the Tashkent Film Festival, the Asia Pacific Film Festival, the Moscow International Film Festival held in May 1980, and the AISFM Film Festival. Forbes included J. V. Somayajulu's performance in the film on its list of "25 Greatest Acting Performances of Indian Cinema". In 2013, in an online poll conducted by CNN-IBN on their website as part of the hundred years celebration of Indian cinema, Sankarabharanam came eleventh in the poll for finding the "greatest Indian film ever." Sankarabharanam opened to near-empty halls and by the end of the first week, all theaters were houseful for every show. It had an extraordinary run, running for more than 25 weeks in many centers. Released in Bangalore without dubbing it ran for a year. It won four National Film Awards including the Best Popular Feature Film, the first for a South-Indian film at the 27th National Film Awards, and seven state Nandi Awards. It was later dubbed into Tamil and Malayalam under the same title. The Malayalam dub went on to run for over an year in theatres. Viswanath subsequently directed the Hindi remake Sur Sangam. Plot Sankara Sastri, a widower with a daughter named Sarada, is one of the most popular Carnatic singers of the day, famed for having mastered the raga Sankarabharanam. Tulasi is the daughter of a devadasi, who admires Sastri from afar. Once, when Sastri came to their town on tour, Tulasi met him on the riverbank when Sastri was teaching his own daughter.