Venkatesh Chakravarthy

Dean (Ramanaidu Film School)

Venkatesh Chakravarthy formally trained in philosophy is a filmmaker, film scholar, film teacher and film critic. After teaching at the Film & Television Institute of Tamil Nadu from 1983-1987 which is now known as M.G.R. Film Institute of Tamil Nadu, he played a key role in designing the first Bachelor’s Degree Course in Visual Communication in the region at Loyola College, Chennai in 1989. This was followed by a wide body of Television work as director & editor in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil for the next ten years.

From 1999 – 2002 he taught the first Masters course in Screen Studies in Malaysia at the Science University of Malaysia, Penang. On his return, he wrote a critically acclaimed play Mirror, which has been performed in theatre festivals and workshops in India and abroad. In 2005 he worked as the Executive Producer of an Indian English feature film – Framed – which was written and directed by Chetan Shah of Raw-film. This was followed by Chakravarthy’s critically acclaimed documentary feature, Chennai: The Split City in 2006. In 2008, it is with his well-researched curriculum design that the Ramanaidu Film School was founded by Suresh Productions at Hyderabad, where he served as the Dean and the Professor & Head of the Department of Direction & Screenwriting for six years. From 2014-2017, he served as the Regional Director of L.V.Prasad Film & TV Academy following which he became the the Dean of Media Studies at the SRM University, Ramapuram, Chennai in 2017. On June 2018, he returned to Ramanaidu Film School again to take over charge as Dean, Academics.

Venkatesh Chakravarthy has published two co-authored books on the French New Wave and New Iranian Cinema respectively in Tamil and has independently authored, Suvadugal: An Anthology of Film Criticism (Volume 1) of his writings on Tamil Cinema apart from peer reviewed book chapters and essays in English. He has at the same time contributed a variety of articles in Tamil and English in the mainstream press over the last four decades. Apart from functioning as resource person in workshops and seminars, he has made formal presentations at the New York University, Michigan State University and WAAC/Griffith University Colloquium. His body of work on the visual media, apart from the documentary mentioned above consists of 90 edited hours of television programmes as a Director and Editor. In the mainstream cinema, he has provided script consultancy to feature films such as Vedam, Vaanam and Krishanam Vande Jagadgurum.

Venkatesh Chakravarthy

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