Telugu cinema legend Akkineni Nageswara Rao’s centenary to be celebrated with special film festival

Mumbai:  Telugu cinema icon the late Akkineni Nageswara Rao, the father of Telugu megastar Nagarjuna Akkineni, will be honoured on his centenary with a special film festival.

India’s Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) is set to commemorate the special occasion with a countrywide film festival, reports ‘Variety’.

Akkineni Nageswara Rao is known for his versatility, and worked across the Telugu, Tamil and Hindi-language cinema industries with a career spanning over 7 decades and 250 movies.

He was born into a family of farmers on 20 September 1924 in Ramapuram, Krishna District, of present-day Andhra Pradesh, and was the youngest of five brothers. His formal education was limited to primary schooling due to his parents’ poor economic condition. He began working in theatre at the age of 10. He specialised in playing female characters in theatre, since women at that time were mostly prohibited from acting.

As per ‘Variety’, he was a recipient of several accolades, including the Padma Vibhushan and Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India’s highest acting honour.

The upcoming event is titled ‘ANR 100 – King Of The Silver Screen’, and will showcase 10 restored classics from Sept. 20-22, across 25 Indian cities.

The retrospective coincides with his 100th birth anniversary on September 20, will feature landmark Telugu films spanning six decades.

Film enthusiasts can look forward to screenings of classics like ‘Devadasu’, ‘Missamma’, and the mythological fantasy ‘Mayabazar’.

The 1960s will be represented by ‘Bharya Bharthalu’, ‘Gundamma Katha’, ‘Doctor Chakravarthi’ and ‘Sudigundalu’. The selection also includes later hits such as ‘Prem Nagar’ and ‘Premabhishekam’. It will conclude with the late actor’s final film appearance in ‘Manam’.

These screenings will take place in metros like Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and Bengaluru, as well as tier 1 and tier 2 cities including Vadodara, Jalandhar and Tumkur. The festival is a collaborative effort between Film Heritage Foundation, the Akkineni Nageswara Rao family, NFDC – National Film Archive Of India, and multiplex chain PVR-Inox.

–IANS