Hey, I’m Amarnath Sandipamu, an independent filmmaker from Hyderabad, India. Over the last fifteen years I’ve been working on diverse narrative forms, from independent feature-length non-fiction to commercial ad films. My recent work is Medaram Jathara, a 40 min documentary film on the largest tribal festival of South Asia.
With a culturally rich childhood, I was born and brought up in a place called Nizamabad where going to the movies was a religious ritual. Smitten by the colours and mood on the silver screen, my middle-class upbringing made a dreamer that kindled the fascination for cinema early on. At the age of 13, I told himself I should be part of this magical world of moving images.
In 2010, when the Telangana statehood movement was rising, I followed the protests and in the process studied the initiatives of Art @Telangana and made two films – Kannaram Kolours, Neelagiri Nakasheelu. Later in 2013 I made Mana Kaloji as an experimental character study on Kaloji Narayana Rao. The films were broadcasted across all major Telugu News Channels.
I consider myself mostly a self-taught filmmaker reading photography magazines from sunday markets and attending film festivals. However when I encountered the documentary film in its most seductive form with hard hitting subjects and varying themes that were never seen in mainstream cinema, I considered formal training which led me to doing a PG Diploma from Sri Aurobindo Centre for Art and Communication, Delhi. And at 26, I made my is first film which was a short documentary called The Unchanged Stories.
Practicing beyond my own writing and direction, I have collaborated and continue to do as editor and cinematographer on feature-length documentary film projects. Couple of them very rewarding and validating. While handling the camera for In the Shadow of Time directed by my mentor and friend Shankhajeet De received a National Award on Best film on Art and Culture 2017, editing and co-directing Bommalollu by another dear friend Ajit Nag had a grand red carpet screening in the All Lights International Film Festival in 2016 at Ramoji Film City.
To balance my survival making independent films, I engage in making corporate and ad films. Additionally I curate films and give public talks as an active mode of film appreciation while sharing and pondering with fellow filmmakers and diverse audiences.
Currently I’m working on producing films around different folk art forms of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, two states where my roots are deeply entrenched. Also, working on my fiction debut this year. I don’t particularly see a difference between fiction and non-fiction as it’s all about telling a story with a point-of-view that’s unique to the filmmaker which intrinsically forms their politics. That way, filmmaking to me is a way of life and through that studying film while producing some is an everyday celebration.
