A.K. Sekhar was a prime member of the core team that made up the formidable Vauhini pictures along with cinematographer K. Ramnoth and director K.V. Reddy. The three were earlier at H.M. Reddy’s Rohini Pictures that was started in 1937 with B.N. Reddi, the founder of the Vauhini studios, as their chief financier.
Sekhar’s cinematic career started with the Prabhat Talkies Tamil film ‘Seeta Kalyanam’ (1934) on which he served as the set designer. His next film was ‘Sasirekha Parinayam’ (1936), by Chitrapu Narasingh Rao.
With the founding of the Vauhini Studios in 1939, Sekhar joined the studio as chief of the art department. Three of their most notable early films were elaborately staged nationalist melodramas, all of which had Sekhar as the art director: ‘Vande Mataram’ (1939), ‘Sumangali’ (1940) and ‘Swargaseema’ (1945).
The studio also boasted of the most emphatic entries in the genre of saint films that functioned as an intuitive revivalism of the reformist wisdom of yore as a reaction to the supposedly modern turpitude. The first and best known example of this genre was ‘Bhakta Potana’ (1942), starring Chittor V. Nagaiah. The film featured splendid art work by Sekhar along with several homegrown special effects to portray the divine rewards of devotion received by the titular protagonist.
Sekhar’s moment of glory, however, came in 1948 with the release of the magnificent ‘Chandralekha’ that was mounted on a scale unrivalled by anything on Indian screens until then. Sekhar’s marshaling of the humongous resources at his disposal to produce some of the most breathtaking images of grandeur on the Indian screen is a high water mark in the field of art direction till date.
Uday Shankar’s seminal dance-drama ‘Kalpana’ (1948) shared a close osmosis with ‘Chandralekha’ owing their common production space (both were shot at Gemini studios, Madras) and their art director A.K. Sekhar. But whereas the latter overwhelmed audiences with sheer scale and grandeur, ‘Kalpana’ showcased sheer aesthetic innovation and elegance of spirit in its spatial design, choreography and cinematography.
‘Malleeshwari’ (1951) marked another aesthetic triumph for Sekhar with its portrayal of a love story governed by the royal dictates of the Vijayanagara monarch Krishnadevaraya. A long standing passion project for producer-
director B.N. Reddi, the film was hugely acclaimed for its excellent performances by Bhanumathi and N.T. Rama Rao, the soundtrack and, not least, A.K. Sekhar’s exacting production design that recreated the glory and splendour of the royal court. Other prominent historical films during this period were K. Subbu’s ‘Avvaiyar’ (1953) and Vedantam Raghavaiah’s ‘Anarkali’ (1954).
After a hiatus of nearly a decade, Sekhar returned to serve as production designer for the MGR swashbuckler ‘Ayirathil Oruvan’ (1965). This period also saw a trio of Hindi language films on which he worked ‘Main bhi ladki hun’ and ‘Pooja ke Phool’(both 1964) and ‘Do Kaliyan’ (1968). The 1962 historical film ‘Sri Srikakula Andhra Mahavishnuvu Katha’ was directed by him.
Placed below are stills from 'Chandralekha' and 'Malleeshwari'
