Jayabharathi

Jayabharathi is a popular Malayalam film actress who started her career in late 1968. She is a two-time winner of the Kerala State Film Award for best actress.

Jayabharathi's first leading role was given by director P. Venu in C.I.D. Nazir opposite Prem Nazir in 1971. And later she became one of the most successful Malayalam film actresses and performed with such notable leading men as Madhu, Vincent, Jayan, M. G. Soman, Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth. She won the Kerala State Film Awards for her performances in various films in 1972 and Madhavikutty in 1973. One of her famous films was Rathinirvedam, directed by Bharathan, in which she played the role of a woman who fell in love with a boy younger than her. RATHInirvedam is regarded as a landmark in Indian film history . It is one of the most sensuous movies of all time, and is said to have redefined the art of movie making in South India. The extremely erotic scenes performed by JayabhaRATHI sent heat waves across Kerala. Even when some of the intelligentsia predicted the beginning of a new era of parallel cinema, a major section of Malayalis were on the warpath saying that mainstream Malayalam cinema had degenerated to porn. But in spite of the criticism,Rathinirvedam became one of the biggest box office hits in Kerala's history. It inspires similar productions all over South India, even decades after its release. She also directed few films in Malayalam.

Jayabharathi (director)

Jayabharathi is an Indian film director and screenwriter who has worked on Tamil films. Regarded as one of the pioneers of alternate cinema in the Tamil film industry, Jayabharathi has directed nine films across five decades.

Career

As a film student in the 1970s, Jayabharathi explored the idea of making films in an alternate genre in Tamil cinema and became one of the pioneers of the movement. His first film Kudisai (1979) was released after he undertook a crowd-funding route in order to raise Rs90,000 to distribute the film for screening, and in order to generate investment, he sold donation tickets and conducted programmes at government colleges. The film won critical acclaim upon release and has since been preserved at the National Film Archives. He subsequently went on to work with the newspaper Dinamani and wrote articles focussing on world cinema issues. He was briefly associated as an actor in C. Rudhraiya's second film Gramathu Athiyayam (1980), but was later replaced in the lead role by newcomer Nandakumar. His second film was Oomai Jannagal (1984), which depicted a tale on the bonded labour in a tea estate during the rule of the British Raj, while his third film Rendum Rendum Aindhu (1988), was murder mystery tale. His next, Uchi Veyil (1991), which focused of a middle class family's struggles, was selected as the only Tamil film at the Indian Panorama held in Calcutta in 1991 and was later screened in Film Festivals across Canada.