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| C.L.Narasa Reddy Receiving the Award from President Venkatraman |
Release Troubles
Once the film completed its shoot and we were gearing up to release the film, some of the distributors backed out in the last minute, as they felt that the film may not run because the hero and heroine die towards the end. In order to avoid the delay in the release of the film, Narasa Reddy himself had to release in some areas like Vizag (where the film ran 117 days with a full-house every day). Usually film posters will have a lot of color and people don't allow pasting them to their walls in the rural areas. (They even keep signs saying "
ikkaDa poster-lu anTincharaadu",
etc.), but for
Geethanjali they didn't mind that because out of the 24-sheet poster, only two sheets had the faces of hero and heroine and the rest of the sheets were in a pure white backdrop. (
O priyaa priyaa! song where Nagarjuna is chained and Girija appeared in a princess costume were shown on the posters, and some people thought it to be a period film!)
The film costed around 1.2 crore rupees. Nagarjuna was paid 7.5 lakh rupees while Maniratnam's remuneration was ten lakh rupees! It was released on 19th May 1989 and ran for 50 days in 15 centers and celebrated 100 days in 7 centers. The film was dubbed in Tamil as
Idhayate Thirudaade (meaning "
Don't steal [my] heart") and was released with 16 prints (on July 05, 1989), a record number at that time and was a bigger success than in Telugu. The Malayalam dubbed version of the film was an average fare. The film was free-made (unofficial remake) in Hindi as
Yaad Rakhegii Duniya (1992) with Aditya Pancholi and Ruksar, by director Deepak Anand, and that was a complete washout.
Before the release, director K. Raghavendra Rao saw the movie and commented that the film might become a super hit or a super flop but nothing in between. If you ask Nagarjuna about his top ten movies in his career, he will definitely mention this film in his list. This movie gave him a lot of push to work with new directors rather than going with same old directors. The film won 7 Nandi awards including the Best Film, Best Cameraman, Best Storywriter, Best Art Direction, Best Comedian, and Best Choreography. The film also won the Best Entertainer of the Year at national level. Producer C.L. Narasa Reddy received the award from the President R. Venkataraman at the 37th National Awards function.
Direct 100 days centers & theaters
1. VSP Chithrayala 70mm A/c (House-full for 117 days)
2. Kakinada Devi 70mm A/c
3. Vjw Jayaram A/c
4. Guntur Manga 70mm
5. Hyderabad Devi 70mm A/c
6. Tirupathi Mini Prathap A/c
7. Kurnool Nataraj
Direct 50 days centers & number of days
8. Elur Balaji A/c 69
9. Anantapur Ramesh 60
10. Nizamabad Sandhya 70mm A/c - 78
11. Nellore Archana 70mm A/c - 75
12. Bhimavaram Vijayalakshmi 50
13. Srikaakulam Chandra Mahal 50
14. Chiraala Bhavani 50
15. Rajahmundry Kumari A/c - 69
Acknowledgements : Sri Pulagam Chinnarayana, Sri C.L. Narasa Reddy, Release Theatres info by Sri Vijaybhaskar
Photos Courtasy : Telugunaadi
Article by: Sri Atluri
Edited by: NaChaKi
