''Kanooru Heggadithi'' (''Kanooru Headwoman'') is a

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

n film based on the 1936 novel " Kanooru Subbamma Heggadithi" by

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

writer

Kuvempu Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa (29 December 1904 – 11 November 1994), popularly known by his pen name Kuvempu, was an Indian poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He is widely regarded as the greatest Kannada poet of the 20th century. He wa ...

, and directed by

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

and

film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, pr ...

Girish Karnad Girish Karnad (19 May 1938 – 10 June 2019) was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer, playwright and a Jnanpith awardee, who predominantly worked in South Indian cinema and Bollywood. His rise as a playwright in the 1960s marked the ...

. Set in the Malnad region, the film narrates a story of the land and life of a feudal family in pre-independence Malnad. The film marked Karnad's return to directing after a lapse of over a decade. This is the only instance in the Indian cinema history where one Jnanpith Awardee directed a movie based on the work of another Jnanpith Awardee.

Synopsis

Subbamma ( Tara), third wife of Chandre Gowda (

), is a rebellious mistress of the household and encourages sporadic acts of defiance against men from among her women friends. When her husband dies, she uses her position of authority to avenge all the wrongs ever done by man to woman. Her actions end up destroying her, and her place is taken by liberal intellectual Hooviah.

Cast

as Chandre Gowda * Tara as Subbamma * Mallika Prasad Sinha as Site *

Srinivas Prabhu Srinivasa Prabhu is an Indian actor in the Kannada film industry and a theatre artist in Karnataka, India. Some of the notable films of Srinivasa Prabhu as an actor include ''Bimba - Those 90 Minutes'' (2018), '' Kanooru Heggadithi'' (1999), Huduga ...

as Seregara (Manager) * Suchendra Prasad

Production

The film was shot on locations in the Malnad region at the foothills of the Western Ghats in

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO 15919, ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reor ...

. The film was released on video in 2007.

Background

The novel by Kuvempu consisted of 700 pages and dealt with over 150 characters. It took Karnad eight months to reduce it to a feature film screenplay which concentrated on four main characters: Chandre Gowda, Seetha, Hoovayya, and Subbamma - Gowda's third wife. After the shooting began, the women of Megaravalli are returning to their native dress. Even the names of their houses were changed to the titles described in the novel. Director Karnad said that while the film did justice to the Kuvempu novel, it was only an attempt to portray the complexities of the women characters in Kuvempu's work through an attempt to show the three different aspects of womanhood in a feudal set-up, and the novel itself could not be depicted in full.

Reception

After release, the film rekindled the interest in the novel and approximately 2,000 copies were reprinted.

Awards and nominations

* 2000, won

National Film Award The National Film Awards is the most prominent film award ceremony in India. Established in 1954, it has been administered, along with the International Film Festival of India and the Indian Panorama, by the Indian government's Directora ...

for 'Best Feature Film in Kannada'Biography and plays of Girish Karnad
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References

{{Girish Karnad 1999 films 1990s Kannada-language films Films based on Indian novels Best Kannada Feature Film National Film Award winners Films directed by Girish Karnad