Sattiraju Lakshminarayana

Biography:

Bapu, whose real name was Sattiraju Lakshminarayana, was an Indian film director, painter, illustrator, cartoonist, scriptwriter, music artist, and designer who was born on December 15, 1933. He is best known for his contributions to Telugu and Hindi movies. He received the Padma Shri in 2013 in recognition of his work in Indian cinema and art. In addition to two National Honours and two National Film Awards, he has also received two Filmfare Awards South, seven state Nandi Awards, two Raghupathi Venkaiah Awards, and a Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award – South.

Sakshi (1967), directed by Bapu, was screened at the Tashkent International Film Festival in 1968. Seeta Kalyanam (1976) is shown as part of the British Film Institute course and was screened at the BFI London Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, San Reno, and Denver International Film Festivals in 1978. Tyagayya (1981) and Pelli Pustakam (1991) had their world premieres at the International Film Festival of India’s Indian Panorama. November 28, 2011, at the International Film Festival of India, a special screening of Bapu’s 2011 film Sri Rama Rajyam took place.

He starred in the Doordarshan documentary Eminent Cartoonists of India in 1996, and the Indian Institute of Cartoonists gave him a Lifetime Achievement award in 2001. His artistic creations, such as Bapu Bomma, The Navarasas, and the Indian Dances, among others, brought him international fame. These performances took place in 1978 at the National Film Theatre in London and at several Telugu conferences in the United States. He has experience working as a graphic artist for F. D. Stewarts, Chennai, Efficient Publicities, and J Walter Thomson.

He attended the Children’s Books Seminar sponsored by UNESCO in Bangalore in 1964 as a delegate. He provided demos at the UNESCO-sponsored book illustration and cover design training course programme in Chennai the same year. He worked as an art consultant for The Southern Language Book Trust, which was supported by the Ford Foundation, in the 1960s. For eminent South Indian publishers, he has created and illustrated numerous books, five of which have won government awards. Innumerable works derived from folklore and Puranas have also received the same treatment from him.