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| Rajesh and Tulasi in Nelavanka |
The film's story goes around the characters of Gummadi and J.V. Somayajulu. For a natural appearance, the latter grew a beard. However, he had to complete the last schedule of
Pelleedu Pillalu and had to shave it off completely. Jandhyala waited a week for the beard to grow back naturally. Gummadi celebrated his 56th birthday in this shooting. As the
Sutti Janta became very popular with the
Nalugu Sthambaalaata, Jandhayala used the same pair for comedic relief in the otherwise heavy subject and also canned a song on them. After a couple of days of screening in theaters, he felt that the song was not assiociated with the film in any way and trimmed it off. The song is not available now even in the film's officially released VCD. A special thanks was mentioned to Writer M. Diwakar Babu for his play
evvanichE janinchu. This is probably the only Telugu film in which the title is also shown in Urdu. When the film begins, Jandhayala mentions that the film tried to show Muslim life style as authentically as possible and that any mistakes shown were not intentional and seeks pardon for any mistakes therein. This message is also carried out in Urdu as voice-over. The film was dedicated to Gandhiji.
With the producers being new, they could not get the film ready for release, and M. Narasimha Rao stepped in to help release the film. That was why the film's censor date is in October of 1982 and the film's release was in January 1983.
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| Rajesh in Nelavanka |
Late Sree Jandhyala on the film:
After the success of
Nalugu Sthambaalaata, I wanted to do a film on communal harmony. My classmate Mettala Rambrahmam, a Lecturer in Commerce at Jaggayyapeta College by profession, wanted to do a film under my direction. He mentioned about the Muktyala Palace and its importance. It was at the junction for three different districts, with Guntur district on one side, Nalgonda District on another side, and Krishna district across the river. The king of Muktyala really used to have a Muslim charioteer and there were never any communal riots in the village though the Hindu and Muslim proportion of population was equal there. Seeing all these, we thought that it will be the ideal choice to shoot the film. The whole unit stayed in the palace only. As the producer Rambrahmam was from Jagayyapeta, they arranged a mess to prepare food for whole of the unit. We chose the title that way because half moon is a flag symbol for Muslims and adorns Lord Siva too - the title would thus convey that every religion preaches the same thing and that everyone is made same too.
This is one of my favorite films in my direction, but sadly the film didn't do well at the box-office. People say the film was too classy and was not aimed at any masses! "nelvanka teesaanu kaanii nEla vanka chooDaTam marichipOyaanu." We expected the National Award for the film but due to some politics in the industry, our prints were misplaced and we never able to recover the prints after that. I feel so bad about it!
