Bungle Shama Rao Dwarakanath

Bungle Shama Rao Dwarakanath, better known as Dwarakish or Dwarakesh (born 19 August 1942), is an actor, director and producer in the Kannada film industry. He was given the name Dwarakish by the well known Kannada film maker C.V. Shivashankar.^{[citation needed]}

He is an actor, producer and director, who has given opportunities to artists, who were in dire straits. He is a good speaker and has appeared on debates organized by Udaya TV.^{[citation needed]}

Early life

Dwarakish was born on 19 August 1942. Shri. Bungle Shama Rao and Smt. Jayamma were his parents. Dwarakish was born in Hunusuru, grew up in Ittigegud, Mysore. He got his primary education in Sharada Vilas and Banumaiah's school, and he graduated from CPC Polytechnic with a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering. After completing his education, Dwarakish and his brother started an automotive spare parts business called "Bharath Auto Spares". You can still see this shop in Gandhi Square, Mysore. He was strongly attracted to acting and often asked his maternal uncle, a famous cinema director Hunusur Krishnamurthy, to give him a chance to act in movies. In 1963 he decided to quit business and start acting in movies. That was his "Veera Sankalpa"!.^{[citation needed]}

Film career

In 1969, Dwarakish independently produced his first movie "Mayor Muththanna", under the banner of "Dwaraka Films". Dr. Rajkumar and Bharathi played the lead roles in this movie. This movie was a great hit.^{[citation needed]} After Mayor Muththanna, Dwarakish gave a series of box office successes to Kannada cinema, one after the other for the next two decades. He became the king of Kannada cinema producers.^{[citation needed]}

Director

From the year 1985, Dwarakish started directing movies, his first movie as a director was "Nee Baredha Kaadambari". He went on to direct movies for other producers. Behind the camera, Dwarakish was very successful. As a director, he created movies such as "Nee Baredha Kaadambari", "Dance Raja Dance", "Shruthi", "Shruthi Haakidha Hejje", "Raayaru Bandharu Maavana Manege" and "KilaadigaLu"^{[citation needed]}

Dwarakish Chitra faced problems after the failure of some movies. With huge losses from box office failures, Dwarakish was written off by his own colleagues and the entire film industry. On Udaya TV, he lamented that he had lost around 32 crores of rupees.^{[citation needed]} Despite failures Dwarakish did not despair. He continued to make movies introducing new faces to Kannada cinema.

As a producer, he has brought many new people to the cinema. Not only actors and actresses—he has given opportunities to new directors and other technicians. They all consider him to be their "Godfather". The support of these people, and his unwavering dedication to cinema, gave Dwarakish his long awaited moment of success. Dwarakish produced "ApthaMitra" in the year 2004. Apthamitra was a magnificent success, and it was one of a kind in the world of Kannada Cinema . With this success the 'King of Kannada Cinema Producers', Dwarakish, regained his throne in 2005.^{[citation needed]}

Actor

As an actor, he was often typecast as a comedian. But some of his movies were comic action movies, also starring the actor Vishnuvardhan. He is popularly called 'kulla' (meaning a short man) in Kannada. He was the first producer to shoot a Kannada film outside India. The film was Singapoorinalli Raja Kulla. It was a milestone in the history of Kannada cinema. He has in total produced 49 Kannada films and acted in more than 300 films. He has many firsts to his credit.^{[citation needed]}

Dwarakanath was the first producer to offer Rajanikanth an amount of 24 lakhs of rupees for a Tamil film in 1984. He has been instrumental in the careers of great actors like Vishnu Vardhan, Manjula, and Srinath.^{[citation needed]}

He was the first Kannada producer to bring Kishore Kumar to the Kannada film dome, and was the first man to bring Sonu Nigam to Kannada for the film "Majnoo', starring his son Giri Dwarakish.^{[citation needed]}

Records and Awards

'Apthamitra' created records in Kannada Cinema. It was the

• First Kannada movie to celebrate screening for one year in two theaters, Santosh in Bangalore and Ranajith in Mysore.^{[citation needed]}
• First Kannada movie to successfully complete one year of screening with four shows daily.^{[citation needed]}
• First movie in the history of 52 years of film awards to win all the awards given to films of a specific language.^{[citation needed]}

Filmography

• Naniruvude Ninagagi (1979) Co-actors: Vishnuvardhan, Dwarakish, Aarathi

External links

• Official site
• Sify interview
• Dwarakish at the Internet Movie Database