Shyamaprasad - A big leap from mini-screen to celluloid.

As a filmmaker, Shyamaprasad has come of age. His first feature film Agnisakshi, based on noted Malayalam writer Lalithambika Antharjanam's work, has a touch of class though it had earned him many critics too.

Shyamaprasad, who started off from the mini screen, was deeply impressed by Lalithambika Antharjanam's novel when he read it in the eighties. " I also had the good fortune to know Lalithambika Antharjanam closely as her grandson was my colleague. This also helped me to gain an insight into the literary work," he says.

Initially, he planned to make a telefilm or serial based on the novel. Later, he decided to go in for a feature film as there were many limitations such as duration of each episode and so on. Shyamaprasad also felt that the narrative style involving flashbacks was non-viable, a view which many would like to disagree with him.

"I am not a story writer and hence I look out for literary works which impress me," he says. Shyamaprasad had proved his mettle in works based on adaptations. He had done work based on writers including Kamala Das and even Anton Chekov and Albert Camus. But it was never his intention to do justice to the original work or to be 'loyal' to it " but to recreate the impression that the literary work has left on me". A frank admission that could get him into trouble with the self-proclaimed conscience keepers of Malayalam filmdom and the literary world.

But Shyamaprasad has his own arguments to buttress the case. "No story is 100 per cent original and is always based on some experience or events. Once a person realises the truth and assimilates it, then the story becomes his own," he says. "Agnisakshi expresses conditions relevant to today's generation and society," Prasad says, referring to criticism that the movie was outdated.

Agree with that or not, but Agnisakshi was a success at the box office. Shyamaprasad succeeded in carefully treading the middle path between the so-called art and commercial cinema. " The art cinema has developed certain stylistic indulgences in lengthy shots and lack of entertainment value. But the audience felt that the filmmakers were deriving their stylistic enjoyment without bothering to communicate ideas. In Agnisakshi, I deliberately chose a cinematic style that was viewer friendly. This could be the reason for the critical acclaim it received as well as its box office success, " he feels.

Shyamaprasad does not believe that he has shifted his focus to big screen from television. " I continue to work in both. I was actually trained in theatre and it was by chance that I got into Doordarshan as a producer, went on to make short films and then a movie," he says. But he admits that his television career helped him in making cinema as "the technology applies to both".

"After ten years in Doordarshan, I realized that its style of functioning was restricting my artistic freedom and that was why I opted for independent film making," he notes. Incidentally both of his feature films Agnisakhsi and Kallu Kondu Oru Pennu, have female oriented plots. Prasad says it was not a conscious effort. " But I was deeply touched by the untold trauma of womanhood," he explains.

Shyamaprasad is now working on the script of a thriller set in the future, "some fifty years from now". He hopes to complete the script by the year-end. Shyamaprasad is the son of BJP National Vice president and the Union Minister of state for Law, Justice and Company Affairs, O Rajagopal.

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