Veteran Tollywood filmmaker Daggubati Ramanaidu has been selected for the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke for 2009.
He is the fifth recipient from the Telugu film industry to win the award. Veteran director B. Narasimha Reddy won in 1974, filmmaker L.V. Prasad in 1982, producer B. Nagi Reddy in 1986 and actor Akkineni Nageswara Rao in 1990.
The filmmaker, who was in Araku Valley shooting Alasyam Amrutham, expressed happiness about being conferred the award. “I have been making films for the past 45 years and am very happy that I won the Dadasaheb Phalke. I have spent whatever I earned from films again on the film industry. I will continue my work and will make films in all the languages in the country,” he told the media.
Ramanaidu will be given the Dadasaheb Phalke award, a citation and Rs 10 lakhs, at the International Film Festival in Goa later this year.
After producing 135 films in Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Malayalam, Marathi and Bengali, he holds a Guinness record for producing the most number of films.
Born on June 6, 1936 to Daggubati Venkateswarlu and Devamma at Karamchedu in Prakasam, Ramanaidu’s first foray into films was when he helped his cousins produce Nammina Bantu, starring ANR and Savitri.
He left for Chennai a few years later and entered the film industry in 1963 by co-producing Anuraagam, followed by the blockbuster Ramudu Bheemudu starring N.T. Rama Rao in 1964.
Ramanaidu is not a stranger to laurels. Surigadu was selected for the Indian Panorama in 1993 and Asukh, a Bengali film, won the National Award for Best Film in 1999. Ramanaidu also has a habit of making cameo appearances in his movies, like Bollywood’s Subhash Ghai.