A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Alias:
R. Jayaraman
Jayabharathi Jayaraman
Jayabharathy
Jayabharati
Jayabharathi is an Indian film director and screenwriter who has worked on Tamil films. Regarded as one of the pioneers of alternate cinema in the Tamil film industry, Jayabharathi has directed nine films across five decades. As a film student in the 1970s, Jayabharathi explored the idea of making films in an alternate genre in Tamil cinema and became one of the pioneers of the movement. His first film Kudisai (1979) was released after he undertook a crowd-funding route in order to raise Rs90,000 to distribute the film for screening, and in order to generate investment, he sold donation tickets and conducted programmes at government colleges. The film won critical acclaim upon release and has since been preserved at the National Film Archives. He subsequently went on to work with the newspaper Dinamani and wrote articles focussing on world cinema issues. He was briefly associated as an actor in C. Rudhraiya's second film Gramathu Athiyayam (1980), but was later replaced in the lead role by newcomer Nandakumar. His second film was Oomai Jannagal (1984), which depicted a tale on the bonded labour in a tea estate during the rule of the British Raj, while his third film Rendum Rendum Aindhu (1988), was murder mystery tale. His next, Uchi Veyil (1991), which focused of a middle class family's struggles, was selected as the only Tamil film at the Indian Panorama held in Calcutta in 1991 and was later screened in Film Festivals across Canada. In the early 2000s, Jayabharathi worked on Nanba Nanba (2002), a tale of friendship and sacrifice amongst two friends, with Chandrasekhar winning the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a quadriplegic. The film itself, narrowly missed out on the Best Film Award. In 2006, he shot and completed the thriller Kurukshetram starring Sathyaraj. Through the film, he revealed he had hoped to draw an allegory of the diplomatic tensions between the nations of India, Pakistan and the United States through the leading characters. Following the film's poor response, Jayabharathi kept away from feature films and concentrated on docudramas. In 2009, he was selected by Doordarshan as one of sixteen directors to help serialize stories written by Sahitya Akademi winners and made the short film, Velvi Thee with newcomers. He subsequently worked on a docudrama on transgender people titled Aravani alongside Janaki Vishwanathan, Sivasankari and S. Ve. Shekher. His most recent completed venture, Puthiran, a tale on child labour and abuse, has also been stuck as a result of financial constraints. The film, which stars Y. Gee. Mahendra and Sangeetha in the leading roles, won positive reviews after being screened at the 2012 Chennai International Film Festival but could not get released as the makers could not pay the processing labs Rs 30 lakhs. In an attempt to release the film in 2013, Jayabharathi pledged that any investor who contributed over Rs 1000 would be credited in the film. In 2017, the film was awarded the Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Film for third best Tamil film in 2010.
Director:
1979 Kudisai
1984 Oomai Janangal
1988 Rendum Rendum Anju
1990 High Noon
2002 Nanba Nanba
2006 Gurukshetram
???? Puthran
Producer:
1979 Kudisai
1984 Oomai Janangal
1988 Rendum Rendum Anju
1990 High Noon
2002 Nanba Nanba
2006 Gurukshetram
???? Puthran
Screenplay:
1979 Kudisai
1984 Oomai Janangal
1988 Rendum Rendum Anju
1990 High Noon
2002 Nanba Nanba
2006 Gurukshetram
???? Puthran
Story:
1979 Kudisai
1984 Oomai Janangal
1988 Rendum Rendum Anju
1990 High Noon
2002 Nanba Nanba
2006 Gurukshetram
???? Puthran
Writer:
1979 Kudisai
1984 Oomai Janangal
1988 Rendum Rendum Anju
1990 High Noon
2002 Nanba Nanba
2006 Gurukshetram
???? Puthran
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Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.