CHAMARAJPET:The book Puttakkana Highway, written by Kannada producer and director B Suresh, was released by Sandalwood actress Shruti at Kannada Sahitya Parishat yesterday.
The author said, “While the movie took birth from a traumatic personal experience, it gave me the poetic licence to narrate the story in the way I intended to. Through this book, I am trying to reach out to all the visual enthusiasts to help them learn the art of visualising of what’s read and felt.”
Prof Neeta Inamdar of Manipal University Press said, “This book was published to present the original story, the screenplay and the reviews to go along with the DVD of the movie. This is an attempt to bring out the nuances of filmmaking, the process that provides a visual expression to a story of the writer’s imagery. This could be of help not only to students and teachers of film and media studies, but also generate a taste among the general public to see the evolution process and appreciate the art of filmmaking.”
Theatre personality Mandya Ramesh, writer of the original story Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar and writer Manu Chakravarthy were among those who attended the event.
H Vinod Bhat, Vice-Chancellor, Manipal University, said, “This book will provide aspiring filmmakers with more insights on scripting and filmography. As Suresh has directed the original movie that won glories, his insights shall provide more credence to the book.”
Puttakkana Highway is a time-tale of a textual story being re-worked into a visual piece. The story puts into words the National Award-winning film of the same title. From a researcher’s perspective, the book offers a learning experience of the expedition from words to script to scenes and back to words. For a film aficionado, it offers a ringside view of how the story emerges as a movie. The story presents vivid exploration to the darker and brighter sides of the land acquisition scam which interests the economists and human activists.
The book includes the original story by Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar, Puttakanna’s Medical College, the original screenplay and the script of the movie. It also has the reviews and discussions along with the DVD of the film.
The author
B Suresh has written 15 and directed more than 25 plays. His Shapurada Seeningi Satya won the Kannada Sahitya Parishat award in 1997. He entered the filmdom as a child artist in Girish Kasaravalli’s Ghatashraddha in 1976. Mithileya Seethe was his first independent movie as a script writer.