Premium69th National Film Awards 2021: Aniruddha Jatkar gets special jury mention for documentary on Bharathi Vishnuvardhan
In a video message after the National Award mention for Baale Bangaara, Aniruddha urged the government to revisit the run-time limitation criteria for the documentary and short film sectionn
Last Updated: 10.37 PM, Aug 24, 2023
Actor Aniruddha Jatkar turned filmmaker in 2021, when he wrote and conceptualized a documentary on the life of his mother-in-law, veteran actress Padmashree Bharathi Vishnuvardhan. Produced by Aniruddha’s wife Keerthi, for their banner Keerthi Innovations, the documentary Baale Bangaara, which is a tad under 2 and a half hours long, captures Bharathi’s life, right from her school and college days, to acting career, married life, loss of her husband, Sahasa Simha Vishnuvardhan, and much more.
Aniruddha, reportedly, spent three years making the documentary, which includes interviews not only with Bharathi, but also several of her friends from the industry and colleagues like Anant Nag, Shivaram, HR Bhargava, Shivarajkumar, Mohanlal, Hema Choudhary, among others. In a video message that Aniruddha circulated after the 69th National Film Awards 2021 announcements today, he expressed his immense joy at the recognition. Talking about Baale Bangaara, which has already made it to multiple record books for being the longest documentary on a living legendary actor, Aniruddha said that he had requested the Information and Broadcast ministry to relax the criteria set for short films and documentaries, both of which come under one category. For consideration in this category, films have to be 40 mins or less in duration, which is an impossible task when making a documentary on a veteran actress like Bharathi, he reckons. A detailed documentary diving into the life of an illustrious personality like her cannot be done in such a limited time duration, he said, adding that his continued request to the government is to bring in changes to this rule, so that films like Baale Bangaara can compete in the category. “You cannot do justice to the subject in this short span,” he says.
In a career spanning several years and industries, Bharathi has done over 150 films and was a superstar at the time she married Vishnuvardhan. Aniruddha watched over a 100 of them to prepare for his journey as filmmaker to make Baale Bangaara. The actor hopes to bring the documentary to an OTT platform at the earliest.