Sira, the short film made by writer, actor, Tanikella Bharani got very good reviews at the Mumbai International Film Festival and has been winning accolades ever since. So, local filmmakers decided to felicitate him for making such a wonderful and path-breaking contribution to Telugu cinema.
They unanimously felt that Tanikella Bharani was a multi-faceted personality, who still had many latent talents that needed to come to the fore. They lauded him for making surreal cinema possible in Telugu and confessed to not understanding most of his film. However, his take on global terrorism was praised as many felt it was something that needed immediate attention. Among those present were CC Reddy, Janardhan Reddy, Nannapaneni Rajakumari and leading names from various fields.
Speaking at the special do, Muralikrishna said Tanikella Bharani was indeed like a bharani or a box which is full of talents. He said after making Telugu people proud with his short films, Bharani should now try making full-length features. He was looking forward to Bharani's book Nakshatram, he added.
Jhansi, who got to be a part of 'Sira' too confessed to not understanding the film while she acted in it. She however added that it was director Bharani who should be given full credit for the film's success. Jhansi pointed out that every time one watched Sira, a new meaning emerged redefining earlier held beliefs. She said it was a brilliant move by Bharani to release a DVD of Sira in order to reach out to people.
Among those who could not stop praising Bharani was another parallel filmmaker KNT Sastry. Sastry had directed Bharani in two of his films, Tiladanam and Kamli. He said that after watching Sira two years back at the Hyderabad Film Festival, he felt that he himself and B Narsing Rao were far away from the expertise of Bharani. He pointed out that he particularly liked the shot where Bharani used a picture of the master of surrealism, Salvador Dali. He also eulogized Bharani for the scene where he interprets the true definition of Brahmana. Sastry hoped that Bharani would soon start making 90-minute features soon.
Yet another director Neelakanta said it was a beautiful experience working with Bharani. He said Bharani's short films have inspired him to take up short film making. Sira is a celebration of Telugu cinema, he added.
Shekhar Kammula, director of films such as 'Godavari' and 'Happy Days' said 'Sira' was a surrealistic gem. He said how he failed to understand surrealism as a student in the US and was nearly shocked to know that such films could be made in India, that too by a Telugu filmmaker. He added that Bharani was a great visualiser, which helped him in making Sira as it is. Kammula compared him to Srinatha kavi and said Sira was the process of a writer becoming a filmmaker. He suggested it would be wonderful if Bharani added some voice-overs at certain points, for people to understand to Sira.
Lastly but surely not the least, it was the turn of the director himself to speak about his film. Tanikella Bharani started off by pointing out that complaints about not understanding his film were unjustified as the whole effort of Sira was to make the film and leave it for audience interpretation. He said we live in a world of constant fear being constantly dragged into a quagmire of human greed and selfishness. He quoted the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Second World War to profess the futility of war.
His protagonist was a poet who had a series of thoughts all of which were interlinked, he added. And this could be explained best in surrealistic terms as we live in a make-belief world, full of hypocrisy, he clarified.
Bharani pointed out that we enjoy a lot of things, without knowing what they actually meant. Similarly, he said, his film was not bound by one interpretation. The idea was to instigate people into deriving their own interpretation from the content that he had provided, he said. If he could do this, he added, he would feel successful.