Daggubati Ramanaidu, the first Telugu filmmaker to win Dadasaheb Phalke award

The most striking thing about the 75-year old doyen of Telugu cinema D Ramanaidu, who gave Hindi cinema blockbusters like Premnagar, Tohfa and Maqsad, was his passion for cinema, his humility and practicality.

Ramanaidu was quite thrilled for having won the highest honour from the Indian government for cultural activity .

“I’m the first Telugu filmmaker to win the Dadasaheb in 20 years. So when I heard about it I was naturally elated. But there are no fullstops in my career. I’ve produced over 130 films in 12 languages. Now I’m producing a film in Punjabi for the first time,” Ramanaidu had said in 2010.

Read: Veteran film producer, Dada Saheb Phalke winner Daggubati Ramanaidu passes away

As a schoolboy, he was excited about film production. Ramanaidu, who started producing films in 1963, was realistic enough to see how much the film market had slumped. He admitted he hadn’t produced a film in Hindi for quite a while because of the slump.

“Earlier I used to remake my Telugu hits into Hindi. But none of my Telugu films have done well of late. Recently, I’ve been busy producing Gujarati and Bhojpuri films. But now I will definitely produce another Hindi film very soon,” the soft-spoken movie baron candidly admitted some years ago.

Ramanaidu said that he kept up with changing trends in world cinema through his children. “My son and now my grandsons have joined me. We are family completely consumed by cinema. We virtually live for cinema. I’ve been witness to many changing trends in moviemaking. Our production house keeps abreast of these changes.”

For this diehard filmmaker movie-making is the only option. “I’ll never retire. If I don’t make movies I wouldn’t know what to do.”