114-525: Madha Gaja Raja is an unreleased Indian Tamil -language comedy film directed by Sundar C and produced by Gemini Film Circuit . It stars Vishal , Anjali and Varalaxmi Sarathkumar in the leading roles, while Santhanam and Nithin Sathya play other pivotal supporting roles. The film began production in 2012 and was completed by 2013, but remains unreleased due to financial troubles. Director Sundar C and Vishal announced that they would work together on
228-468: A lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached. Most Tamil affixes are suffixes . Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person , number , mood , tense , etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination , which can lead to long words with many suffixes, which would require several words or
342-611: A "realistic" manner. Specifically, it told the story of the friction between a newly-wed couple. The score by Ilaiyaraaja was appreciated along with SPB in back ground score and became popular upon release. Mouna Raagam was subsequently dubbed into Telugu under the same title and became a hit in Andhra Pradesh as well. The film elevated Mani's status as a director, and won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil at
456-432: A , as with other Indic scripts . This inherent vowel is removed by adding a tittle called a puḷḷi , to the consonantal sign. For example, ன is ṉa (with the inherent a ) and ன் is ṉ (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called virama , but the Tamil script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible puḷḷi to indicate a 'dead consonant' (a consonant without
570-740: A 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies. Tamil is the primary language of the majority of the people residing in Tamil Nadu , Puducherry , (in India) and in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . The language is spoken among small minority groups in other states of India which include Karnataka , Telangana , Andhra Pradesh , Kerala , Maharashtra , Gujarat , Delhi , Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India and in certain regions of Sri Lanka such as Colombo and
684-556: A biographical film based on the life of Dhirubhai Ambani , a business magnate from India. The film starred Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai . The film, set in the early 1950s, became a box office success and received critical acclaim. Guru was screened at the Tous Les Cinemas du Monde (World Cinema) section of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival . In 2010, Mani worked on a bilingual film, titled Raavanan starting Vikram , Aishwarya Rai and Prithviraj Sukumaran in Tamil where in
798-461: A box office failure. Later the distributor of the film filed a police complaint against Mani on account of the huge losses suffered by him. His next film, romantic drama O Kadhal Kanmani starring Dulquer Salmaan and Nithya Menen as the lead pair, was released in April 2015. The cinematography and editing of the film was handled by P.C. Sreeram and A. Sreekar Prasad respectively, while music
912-408: A chance to direct Pagal Nilavu (1985). The film had Murali and Revathi playing lead roles. It was different from his previous two films in that it included dance sequences and a "comedy track". The same year, he directed another Tamil film Idaya Kovil , a romantic drama . He remodeled a ready made script on the lines of Charlie Chaplin 's Limelight (1952). Despite being unsatisfied with
1026-495: A chance to direct a film in Malayalam . Scripted by T. Damodaran and featuring Mohanlal as hero, Unaroo was about the corruption in labour unions of Kerala . The film was completed within two months and released in April 1984. Mani Ratnam attributed the failure of the film to the conflict of interests that he and the producer had. Following this, he entered Tamil cinema when G. Thyagarajan of Sathya Jyothi Films offered him
1140-701: A child of Sri Lankan Tamil parentage adopted by Indian parents, who wishes to meet her biological mother during the Sri Lankan Civil War . The film was critically acclaimed and commercially successful, winning six National Film Awards , Filmfare Award for Best Direction in Tamil , In the Spirit of Freedom Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival, and an award at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles . In 2004, he made Aayutha Ezhuthu , which tells
1254-711: A degree in commerce from the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda College , affiliated to the Madras University . Later, he did his Master of Business Administration (MBA) in finance from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai . After finishing his post-graduation in 1977, he was employed in a firm in Madras as a management consultant, and continued to work there for sometime. Ratnam married actress Suhasini on 26 August 1988. The couple have
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#17330927251411368-511: A family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent . It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family that, alongside Tamil proper, includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups such as the Irula and Yerukula languages (see SIL Ethnologue ). The closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam ; the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. Although many of
1482-540: A few Hindi , Telugu , Malayalam and Kannada films. He is one of India's most acclaimed and commercially successful filmmakers. Ratnam has won seven National Film Awards , four Filmfare Awards , six Filmfare Awards South , and numerous awards at various film festivals across the world. In 2002, the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri , acknowledging his contributions to film. Despite being born into
1596-463: A fight scene and was forced to take a week's break from working. The film's shoot moved to Hyderabad during September 2012, with Arya joining the team's cast to shoot for a guest appearance. Arya had flown in from Chennai and completed his work on the film within a single day. The team planned to shoot a song sequence in China , but eventually flew to Australia to record the sequences. By October 2012, it
1710-527: A film family, Mani Ratnam did not develop any interest in films when he was young. Upon completion of his post graduation in management, he started his career as a consultant. He entered the film industry through the 1983 Kannada film , Pallavi Anu Pallavi . The failure of his subsequent films would mean that he would be left with fewer offers. After working in Telugu and Malayalam Cinema, he made his major breakthrough with Mouna Ragam (1986), established him as
1824-471: A group of people namely P. C. Sreeram , Santhana Bharathi , and P. Vasu , who shared his interest of entering into the film industry. With a script in hand, Mani Ratnam had an idea to either get a producer for his film or to narrate the script to a "celebrated" film-maker, so that he could get a chance to work along with them and get to know about the various aspects involved in film-making. He chose three directors—Balachander, Bharathiraja, and Mahendran. As
1938-879: A leading filmmaker in Tamil cinema which won him his first Filmfare Best Director Award . He was the director of the critically acclaimed Nayakan (1987) and Anjali (1990), both of which qualified as India's official entry for The Academy Awards . He found success with the crime drama Thalapathi , romantic terrorism drama Roja (1992), Bombay (1995), Dil Se.. (1998), and his romantic trilogy of Mouna Ragam (1986), Alai Payuthey (2000), O Kadhal Kanmani (2015). Each of his films contain its own unique style, with beautifully photographed songs and unique back-lighting. Exploring success in romantic, terrorism war and drama films. His epic historical dramas, Ponniyin Selvan: I (2022) and Ponniyin Selvan: II (2023), based on
2052-783: A majority of his films. Lauded for his casting in each of his films, he claimed in an interview that "I am not a director who performs and shows. I discuss the role, the scene with my actors and let them bring life to it". Right from the beginning of his career, his works were noted for their technical expertise in areas such as cinematography, art direction, editing and background score. For his debut film, he managed to handpick Balu Mahendra, Thotta Tharani , B. Lenin , and Ilaiyaraaja , leading craftsmen in their respective fields. As his career progressed, he worked with his childhood friend P. C. Sreeram and continued his collaborations with him until Geethanjali . In 1991 for his film Thalapathi , he chose Santosh Sivan and Suresh Urs —both newcomers to
2166-511: A more light-hearted approach with his next film— Thiruda Thiruda (1993). Scripted by Ram Gopal Varma , the film was a fun filled caper, which was a departure from Mani's previous style and fared moderately well at the box office. Thiruda Thiruda was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1994. Mani again teamed up with Ram Gopal Varma to provide the screenplay for the latter's Telugu film Gaayam ,
2280-591: A number of apparent Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew dating to before 500 BCE, the oldest attestation of the language. Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from 300 BCE to 700 CE. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil-Brahmi . The earliest long text in Old Tamil
2394-650: A number of skeletons were found buried in earthenware urns dating from at least 696 BCE in Adichanallur . Some of these urns contained writing in Tamil Brahmi script, and some contained skeletons of Tamil origin. Between 2017 and 2018, 5,820 artifacts have been found in Keezhadi . These were sent to Beta Analytic in Miami , Florida , for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating. One sample containing Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions
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#17330927251412508-512: A number of sound changes, in particular, a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions, and the disappearance of vowels between plosives and between a plosive and rhotic. Contact with European languages affected written and spoken Tamil. Changes in written Tamil include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamil. The syntax of written Tamil has also changed, with
2622-467: A project in January 2012, and it was revealed that Vishal would portray a triple role in the film. After denying reports that the female lead role was first offered to Shruti Haasan , Sundar hinted that they were set to sign on Hansika Motwani , but her busy schedule left her unavailable to commit dates for the project. Titled Madha Gaja Raja , after Vishal's three characters, Karthika Nair eventually joined
2736-551: A sentence in English. To give an example, the word pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka (போகமுடியாதவர்களுக்காக) means "for the sake of those who cannot go" and consists of the following morphemes : போக pōka go முடி muṭi accomplish Mani Ratnam Gopalaratnam Subramaniam (born 2 June 1956), known professionally as Mani Ratnam , is an Indian film director, film producer and screenwriter who predominantly works in Tamil cinema and
2850-620: A small number speak the language. In Reunion where the Tamil language was forbidden to be learnt and used in public space by France it is now being relearnt by students and adults. Tamil is also spoken by migrants from Sri Lanka and India in Canada , the United States , the United Arab Emirates , the United Kingdom , South Africa , and Australia . Tamil is the official language of
2964-437: A socio-politico film loosely based on The Godfather . In 1995, Mani returned to Tamil language drama through Bombay starring Arvind Swamy and Manisha Koirala , which told the story of a Hindu-Muslim couple in the midst of the 1993 religious Bombay riots and bombings . It was also the first Indian film to focus on marriage between Hindu and Muslim people. The film met with controversy and censorship upon release. It
3078-587: A son. The family resides in Alwarpet , Chennai, where he runs his production company, Madras Talkies . In 1995, Mani Ratnam was wounded and hospitalised after homemade bombs were thrown at his home by attackers, suspected by police as Islamic extremists , in the wake of opposition to his film Bombay which portrayed the romance of a Hindu man with a Muslim woman. An FIR was filed on Mani Ratnam and 49 others in 2019 when they wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi listing statistics and expressing concern over
3192-543: A subject of study in schools in the French overseas department of Réunion . In addition, with the creation in October 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the Government of India and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations, Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. The recognition was announced by the contemporaneous President of India , Abdul Kalam , who
3306-458: A variety of dialects that are all collectively known as Brahmin Tamil . These dialects tend to have softer consonants (with consonant deletion also common). These dialects also tend to have many Sanskrit loanwords. Tamil in Sri Lanka incorporates loan words from Portuguese , Dutch , and English. In addition to its dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on
3420-438: A vowel). In other Indic scripts, it is generally preferred to use a ligature or a half form to write a syllable or a cluster containing a dead consonant, although writing it with a visible virama is also possible. The Tamil script does not differentiate voiced and unvoiced plosives . Instead, plosives are articulated with voice depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of Tamil phonology . In addition to
3534-502: A youngster, films seemed like a waste of time", he claimed in a 1994 interview; however, he started watching films more actively when he was studying at the Besant Theosophical School. During this time, he developed an admiration for actors like Sivaji Ganesan and Nagesh ; watching all their films. When he discovered the legendary director K. Balachander , he became his fan. Upon completing his schooling, he graduated with
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3648-575: Is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia . It is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India , along with Sanskrit , attested since c. 300 BCE. The language belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian language family and shares close ties with Malayalam and Kannada . Despite external influences, Tamil has retained a sense of linguistic purism, especially in formal and literary contexts. Tamil
3762-457: Is based on the dialect of Jaffna . After Tamil Brahmi fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called vaṭṭeḻuttu amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava . The current Tamil script consists of 12 vowels , 18 consonants and one special character, the āytam . The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 × 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel
3876-401: Is deemed unlikely by Southworth due to the contemporary use of the compound 'centamiḻ', which means refined speech in the earliest literature. The Tamil Lexicon of University of Madras defines the word "Tamil" as "sweetness". S. V. Subramanian suggests the meaning "sweet sound", from tam – "sweet" and il – "sound". Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages ,
3990-563: Is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam . Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th-century grammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam , with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu , col , poruḷ , yāppu , aṇi . Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry. Tamil words consist of
4104-501: Is found in Tholkappiyam , which is dated as early as late 2nd century BCE. The Hathigumpha inscription , inscribed around a similar time period (150 BCE), by Kharavela , the Jain king of Kalinga , also refers to a Tamira Samghatta ( Tamil confederacy ) The Samavayanga Sutra dated to the 3rd century BCE contains a reference to a Tamil script named 'Damili'. Southworth suggests that
4218-405: Is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century, was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (ஃ), an old phoneme, the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals, and the transformation of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic . In grammar, the most important change
4332-409: Is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, koṭuntamiḻ has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of centamiḻ . Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example,
4446-410: Is in koṭuntamiḻ , and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of koṭuntamiḻ in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial 'standard' spoken dialects. In India, the 'standard' koṭuntamiḻ , rather than on any one dialect, but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai . In Sri Lanka, the standard
4560-771: Is not always consistently applied. ISO 15919 is an international standard for the transliteration of Tamil and other Indic scripts into Latin characters. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to Latin script , and thus the alphabets of various languages, including English. Apart from the usual numerals, Tamil has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for day, month, year, debit, credit, as above, rupee, and numeral are present as well. Tamil also uses several historical fractional signs. /f/ , /z/ , /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ are only found in loanwords and may be considered marginal phonemes, though they are traditionally not seen as fully phonemic. Tamil has two diphthongs : /aɪ̯/ ஐ and /aʊ̯/ ஔ ,
4674-577: Is predominantly spoken in Tamil Nadu , India, and the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . It has significant speaking populations in Malaysia , Singapore , and among diaspora communities . Tamil has been recognized as a classical language by the Indian government and holds official status in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Singapore. The earliest extant Tamil literary works and their commentaries celebrate
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4788-409: Is the Tolkāppiyam , an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the late 2nd century BCE. Many literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corpus of 2,381 poems collectively known as Sangam literature . These poems are usually dated to between the 1st century BCE and 5th century CE. The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil , which
4902-772: Is used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia , along with English, Malay and Mandarin. A large community of Pakistani Tamils speakers exists in Karachi , Pakistan , which includes Tamil-speaking Hindus as well as Christians and Muslims – including some Tamil-speaking Muslim refugees from Sri Lanka. There are about 100 Tamil Hindu families in Madrasi Para colony in Karachi. They speak impeccable Tamil along with Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi. Many in Réunion , Guyana , Fiji , Suriname , and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins, but only
5016-789: Is well recognized outside India with a retrospective of his films held at various film festivals around the world such as Toronto International Film Festival , Busan International Film Festival , Tokyo Filmex and Birmingham International Film Festival. His films are being screened regularly at many film festivals such as Venice Film Festival , Rotterdam Film Festival , Montreal World Film Festival and Palm Springs International Film Festival . The Government of India honoured Mani with Padma Shri in 2002. He has won several National Film Awards , Filmfare Awards , Filmfare Awards South and state awards. Apart from these awards, many of his films have been screened at various film festivals and have won numerous accolades. Geethanjali , directed by him won
5130-753: The 18th Moscow International Film Festival . In 2010, Mani was honoured with Jaeger-Lecoultre Glory to the Filmmaker at the 67th Venice International Film Festival. In July 2015, he was honoured with the Sun Mark Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bagri Foundation London Indian Film Festival for his esteemed contribution to international cinema. Around the same time, the Museum of the Moving Image , New York City, paid
5244-401: The 34th National Film Awards . He won his first Filmfare Award for directing the film. In 1987, Mani directed Nayakan starring Kamal Haasan , and the film became a huge success and brought him recognition at the national level. Inspired by the 1972 American crime film, The Godfather , the film was based on the real-life story of underworld don Varadarajan Mudaliar , and tells
5358-486: The 35th National Film Awards . The film was India's official entry to the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film at the 60th Academy Awards , but was not nominated. Following these two commercial successes, Mani wrote and directed Agni Natchathiram in 1988. The film deals with the story of half-brothers played by Prabhu and Karthik and is notable for its use of new techniques in camera framework, especially during
5472-648: The Golden Lotus Award for Best Popular Film at the 37th National Film Awards . Other films like Mouna Ragam , Anjali , and Kannathil Muthamittal have won the Best Regional Film awards at the National Film Awards . Two of his films, Roja and Bombay have won the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration . The former was also nominated for Best Film category at
5586-604: The Kargil War , followed a pilot who, during his time as a prisoner of war, reflects on his failed love life. Kaatru Veliyidai was released in April 2017 to mixed reviews and received an average box office return. After Kattru Veliyadai , Ratnam's next film was the crime thriller Chekka Chivantha Vaanam , starring Arvind Swami , Silambarasan , Arun Vijay and Vijay Sethupathi as the lead actors, while Jyothika , Aishwarya Rajesh , Aditi Rao Hydari and Dayana Erappa, Prakash Raj , Thiagarajan , and Mansoor Ali Khan rounded out
5700-463: The National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment in 1990. In addition, it won the Best Director and Nandi Award for Best Story Writer for Mani. Mani maintained a momentum of making emotional stories of under-served people through the film Anjali in 1990, which starred Baby Shamili as the central character. The film which also had Raghuvaran and Revathy , told
5814-458: The Pandiyan Kings for the organization of long-termed Tamil Sangams , which researched, developed and made amendments in Tamil language. Even though the name of the language which was developed by these Tamil Sangams is mentioned as Tamil, the period when the name "Tamil" came to be applied to the language is unclear, as is the precise etymology of the name. The earliest attested use of the name
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#17330927251415928-584: The University of Madras , was one of the earliest dictionaries published in Indian languages. A strong strain of linguistic purism emerged in the early 20th century, culminating in the Pure Tamil Movement which called for removal of all Sanskritic elements from Tamil. It received some support from Dravidian parties . This led to the replacement of a significant number of Sanskrit loanwords by Tamil equivalents, though many others remain. According to
6042-486: The 11th century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai , a special form of Tamil developed in the 9th and 10th centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values. Several castes have their own sociolects which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. It is often possible to identify a person's caste by their speech. For example, Tamil Brahmins tend to speak
6156-534: The Indian epic written by Kalki Krishnamurthy , were critical and commercial blockbusters with the former becoming the 25th highest-grossing film in India and 5th highest-grossing Tamil film . Mani Ratnam was born on 2 June 1956 in Madurai, Tamil Nadu as the second child of a Tamil Brahmin family that was closely associated with film production. His father, S. Gopalaratnam, was a film distributor who worked for Venus Pictures, while his uncle, "Venus" Krishnamurthy,
6270-476: The Indian state of Haryana , purportedly as a rebuff to Punjab , though there was no attested Tamil-speaking population in the state, and was later replaced by Punjabi , in 2010. In Malaysia, 543 primary education government schools are available fully in Tamil as the medium of instruction . The establishment of Tamil-medium schools has been in process in Myanmar to provide education completely in Tamil language by
6384-469: The Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the 22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India . It is one of the official languages of the union territories of Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Tamil is also one of the official languages of Singapore . Tamil is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, along with Sinhala . It was once given nominal official status in
6498-792: The Tamil film industry—to do cinematography and editing respectively. Both would later become a part of his regular crew. While working on Raavan , Santosh Sivan noted "any cameraman can hone his skills just working with Mani" and described Mani Ratnam's films as difficult to film. From his debut project till Thalapathi , Ilaiyaraaja was his regular composer. For his next film Roja (1992), he collaborated with debutant A. R. Rahman , who has been his regular composer for all his films till date. Among cinematographers, he has also worked with Madhu Ambat , Rajiv Menon , Ravi K. Chandran , V. Manikandan and Ravi Varman while switching between Sreeram and Santosh Sivan otherwise. Since Alaipayuthey , Sreekar Prasad has been his regular film editor. Mani
6612-585: The Tamil language, Kannada still preserves a lot from its roots. As part of the southern family of Indian languages and situated relatively close to the northern parts of India, Kannada also shares some Sanskrit words, similar to Malayalam. Many of the formerly used words in Tamil have been preserved with little change in Kannada. This shows a relative parallel to Tamil, even as Tamil has undergone some changes in modern ways of speaking. According to Hindu legend, Tamil or in personification form Tamil Thāi (Mother Tamil)
6726-673: The Tamils who settled there 200 years ago. Tamil language is available as a course in some local school boards and major universities in Canada and the month of January has been declared "Tamil Heritage Month" by the Parliament of Canada . Tamil enjoys a special status of protection under Article 6(b), Chapter 1 of the Constitution of South Africa and is taught as a subject in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province. Recently, it has been rolled out as
6840-442: The ancient language ( sankattamiḻ ), a modern literary and formal style ( centamiḻ ), and a modern colloquial form ( koṭuntamiḻ ). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write centamiḻ with a vocabulary drawn from caṅkattamiḻ , or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking koṭuntamiḻ . In modern times, centamiḻ
6954-510: The attempts to meet and convince all the three proved to be unsuccessful, he decided to look out for a producer. In the process, he along with P. C. Sreeram —who would collaborate with him in most of his future projects—met around 20 people; however, all the efforts turned out to be unsuccessful. Mani Ratnam developed a script—originally written in English—into a film and named it Pallavi Anu Pallavi . His uncle Krishnamurthy agreed to produce
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#17330927251417068-423: The crew. The film, however, did not take off and was eventually shelved. Nevertheless, he was firm in his idea of becoming a film-maker. Although not impressed with many of the films made in Tamil cinema, he was "amazed" at Bharathiraja 's 16 Vayathinile (1977), K. Balachander 's Apoorva Raagangal (1975), and Mahendran 's Mullum Malarum (1978) and Uthiripookkal (1979). During this time, he befriended
7182-625: The critically successful Iruvar with Mohanlal , Aishwarya Rai , Tabu and Prakash Raj in the lead. Iruvar was awarded the Best Film at the "Festival of the Auteur Films" at the FEST film festival held in Belgrade . In 1998 came the third part of his "terrorism trilogy", named Dil Se.. and starring Shahrukh Khan and Manisha Koirala , with the latter fabricating the second collaboration. It showed
7296-474: The critics compared to its other versions. The New York Times called the movie a "critics' pick". However, the reviewers of the Hindi version panned the film; Rajeev Masand said it was "a crushing bore of a film, a disappointment on virtually every count" The Tamil version was declared a box office success. Mani's film, Kadal was released worldwide on 1 February 2013 to mixed reviews from critics and became
7410-670: The culture associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India, but it has also been related to the Harappan civilization . Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods: Old Tamil (300 BCE–700 CE), Middle Tamil (700–1600) and Modern Tamil (1600–present). About of the approximately 100,000 inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India in India are in Tamil Nadu. Of them, most are in Tamil, with only about 5 percent in other languages. In 2004,
7524-936: The dialect of Madurai , and iṅkaṭe in some northern dialects. Even now, in the Coimbatore area, it is common to hear " akkaṭṭa " meaning "that place". Although Tamil dialects do not differ significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. The dialects spoken in Sri Lanka retain many words and grammatical forms that are not in everyday use in India, and use many other words slightly differently. Tamil dialects include Central Tamil dialect , Kongu Tamil , Madras Bashai , Madurai Tamil , Nellai Tamil , Kumari Tamil in India ; Batticaloa Tamil dialect , Jaffna Tamil dialect , Negombo Tamil dialect in Sri Lanka; and Malaysian Tamil in Malaysia. Sankethi dialect in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by Kannada . The dialect of
7638-399: The differences between Tamil and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic divergence of the western dialect, the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century. Additionally Kannada is also relatively close to the Tamil language and shares the format of the formal ancient Tamil language. While there are some variations from
7752-634: The district of Palakkad in Kerala has many Malayalam loanwords, has been influenced by Malayalam's syntax, and has a distinctive Malayalam accent. Similarly, Tamil spoken in Kanyakumari District has more unique words and phonetic style than Tamil spoken at other parts of Tamil Nadu. The words and phonetics are so different that a person from Kanyakumari district is easily identifiable by their spoken Tamil. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in
7866-605: The domestic market, despite being a success overseas. It was screened in many international film festivals, and won the Netpac award (Ex-Aqueo) in the Berlin International Film Festival . The film over the years has achieved cult classic status. In 2000, Mani directed the romantic drama Alaipayuthey that starred R. Madhavan and Shalini . The film focussed on marriage and explored relationships and their consequences, and garnered critical recognition. It
7980-404: The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi . However the plans were put on hold after an Australian national, Santhanam, successfully appealed for a court injunction to stop the film's release in September 2013. He claimed that Gemini Film Circuit had agreed to pay him a sum of six million rupees for his services of providing production facilities during the team's schedule in Australia, but had failed to make
8094-420: The film but imposed a condition that it should be made under a limited budget in Kannada , to which he agreed. He persuaded Balu Mahendra to do the cinematography as he found the latter's work to be very impressive. He managed to get other crew members B. Lenin (for Film editing), Thota Tharani (for art direction ) and Ilaiyaraaja (for composer music), all leading craftsmen in their respective fields. For
8208-479: The film by December 2015. The plans to release on 29 April 2016 also failed and the film still remains unreleased. In 2024, Sundar said he did not understand why the film was still unreleased, and mentioned him and Vishal having requested the production company to sell the distribution rights to them. Tamil language Sri Lanka Singapore Malaysia Canada and United States Tamil ( தமிழ் , Tamiḻ , pronounced [t̪amiɻ] )
8322-536: The film look was unveiled at 2010 Cannes Film Festival , as part of its marketing campaign. and Raavan in Hindi. The Tamil version was dubbed into Telugu and titled Villain . The film was released worldwide on 18 June 2010. The film is loosely based on the Hindu epic Ramayana ; its narrative occurs over 14 days when a revolutionist named Veera, who lives in a forest, kidnaps a policeman's wife to avenge his sister's death. The Tamil version received positive reviews from
8436-509: The film's distributing rights and planned to release the film on 7 March 2014 but the idea was dropped. Similarly Vishal made further efforts to try and release the film after the success of his own productions, but failed in his attempts. Sundar C and Vishal subsequently moved on to finish and release another film together during the period of delay, Aambala (2015). Subsequently, in November 2015, Vishal pledged that he would take action to release
8550-416: The film, and helped get it censored, but was unsuccessful in getting the film released. Vishal later disassociated from the film and Gemini Film Circuit acquired the film again from the actor, and revealed that they would release the film in due course. The makers continued to announce more potential release dates throughout 2014, none of which materialised. Distributor P. T. Selvakumar contemplated purchasing
8664-438: The film, while Samar was still running in theatres. The failure of Mani Ratnam 's Kadal (2013) affected Gemini Film Circuit's finances after the venture became an unexpected failure, and distributors of Kadal wanted compensation before Madha Gaja Raja was released. After nine months of little information about the project, the producers announced their intentions of releasing the film on 9 September 2013 to coincide with
8778-499: The film. The team subsequently began another schedule with the new storyline in Palani during June 2012. The team moved to Jaipur during August 2012 to complete another schedule, while Vishal revealed that the title now referred to the agitated state of Lord Ganesha rather than the names of his characters, stating that "Gaja Raja" could be literally translated as fury. During the particular schedule, Vishal suffered an injury when filming
8892-403: The final product, the film was a major box-office success. The phase between 1983 and 1986 was the toughest of his career with only Pallavi Anupallavi feeling satisfactory; the other three completed with a lot of "compromises". In 1986, Mani directed the Tamil romantic drama Mouna Ragam , which starred Revathi and Mohan . The film was critically acclaimed for portraying urban Tamils in
9006-699: The hill country . Tamil or dialects of it were used widely in the state of Kerala as the major language of administration, literature and common usage until the 12th century CE. Tamil was also used widely in inscriptions found in southern Andhra Pradesh districts of Chittoor and Nellore until the 12th century CE. Tamil was used for inscriptions from the 10th through 14th centuries in southern Karnataka districts such as Kolar , Mysore , Mandya and Bengaluru . There are currently sizeable Tamil-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in Malaysia , Singapore , Philippines , Mauritius , South Africa , Indonesia, Thailand, Burma , and Vietnam . Tamil
9120-406: The industry. A majority of his films are characterized by a string of socio-political themes. Because of his idea of combining art and commercial elements, most of his films garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success. Nayakan , Bombay and Iruvar were inspired from real-life incidents, while Thalapathi and Raavan were based on Indian epics. Mani Ratnam handled screenplays for
9234-432: The introduction of new aspectual auxiliaries and more complex sentence structures, and with the emergence of a more rigid word order that resembles the syntactic argument structure of English. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiran Vanakkam , thus making Tamil the first Indian language to be printed and published. The Tamil Lexicon , published by
9348-456: The latter of which is restricted to a few lexical items. Tamil employs agglutinative grammar, where suffixes are used to mark noun class , number , and case , verb tense and other grammatical categories. Tamil's standard metalinguistic terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamil, as opposed to the Sanskrit that is standard for most Indo-Aryan languages . Much of Tamil grammar
9462-589: The male lead, he cast Anil Kapoor after watching his performance in the Telugu film Vamsa Vruksham (1980). Lakshmi was signed up as the female lead. The film explored the relationship between a young man and an older woman. Although an average grosser at the box-office, the film fetched Mani Ratnam the Best Screenplay Award from the Karnataka State Government for the year 1983. After watching Pallavi Anu Pallavi , N. G. John offered him
9576-423: The name comes from tam-miḻ > tam-iḻ "self-speak", or "our own speech". Kamil Zvelebil suggests an etymology of tam-iḻ , with tam meaning "self" or "one's self", and " -iḻ " having the connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternatively, he suggests a derivation of tamiḻ < tam-iḻ < * tav-iḻ < * tak-iḻ , meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)". However, this
9690-531: The old aspect and time markers. The Nannūl remains the standard normative grammar for modern literary Tamil, which therefore continues to be based on Middle Tamil of the 13th century rather than on Modern Tamil. Colloquial spoken Tamil, in contrast, shows a number of changes. The negative conjugation of verbs, for example, has fallen out of use in Modern Tamil – instead, negation is expressed either morphologically or syntactically. Modern spoken Tamil also shows
9804-408: The payment. Under financial restraints, Gemini Film Circuits had also sold on the film to Vishal's newly launched production studio, Vishal Film Factory, but failed to inform Vishal of the outstanding payment which had to be made to Santhanam. The High Court subsequently had put a stay order on the release of the film until the issue was sorted. Vishal then took up the responsibility in trying to release
9918-433: The producers, Gemini Film Circuit. However, Vishal's other film Samar (2013) had been long-delayed and also wanted to release on the same date, and the actor tried to ensure both films did not clash. As a result, Madha Gaja Raja was briefly put on hold until the release of Samar . The makers then suggested that the film would release on 26 January 2013, but Samar 's success meant that they sought to avoid releasing
10032-452: The prominent roles. The venture was jointly produced by Mani Ratnam and Subaskaran under their banners, Madras Talkies and Lyca Productions . The music was composed by A. R. Rahman , while Ravi Varman handled the cinematography of the film. A. Sreekar Prasad was the editor. Initially planned as one film, reminiscent of Mughal-E-Azam , Ponniyin Selvan was divided into two parts. This
10146-427: The promotional activity of her Hindi film. Varalaxmi Sarathkumar was consequently drafted in after working producers Gemini Film Circuit during their previous venture Podaa Podi (2012), while Anjali was selected for the main leading female role. Gayatri Rao joined the film's cast to portray Santhanam's love interest, while actors Nithin Sathya and Sadagoppan Ramesh were selected to portray Vishal's friends in
10260-426: The relationship between a young man and a dangerous, disturbed woman. Although they fall in love, she is unable to take the romance further due to her bleak past. The soundtrack album, again composed by A. R. Rahman, gained mass appeal and gave Rahman his next Filmfare Award for Best Music Direction in 1999. Unlike his previous two projects, Dil Se.. opened with little note among film critics and performed poorly in
10374-498: The rise of communal violence against minorities including Muslims , Christians and Dalits since Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power in 2014. Mani Ratnam was not satisfied with his job as a consultant as he found it to be a mere extension of his academics. During this time his friend Ravi Shankar, son of director B. R. Panthulu , was in the process of making his first film. Mani Ratnam, Ravi Shankar and another friend Raman, son of filmmaker S. Balachander , worked on
10488-542: The script of the film. Mani Ratnam took a sabbatical from his job to ensure his participation in the making of the film. Being inexperienced, the makers were largely dependent upon the American Cinematographer magazine. The principal cast included Vishnuvardhan , Srinath , Ambareesh , Lakshmi , and Roja Ramani . When the filming was about to begin in Kolar, Karnataka , Mani Ratnam left his consulting job and joined
10602-430: The script, with the new version having Vishal portray only a single character, with two leading actresses instead of one. Disappointed with this development, Karthika Nair left the project stating that the role of the lead actress had been significantly diminished as a result of the change of story. Taapsee Pannu signed on to replace Karthika, but soon afterwards left the project citing date clashes with her commitments for
10716-421: The songs. The film had a successful run in the box office. In 1989, Telugu actor Nagarjuna and Mani Ratnam collaborated for a Telugu film and it remains the only Telugu film directed by Ratnam. The film Geethanjali which had Nagarjuna and Girija Shettar in the lead, told the story of an ill-fated couple, both of whom are suffering from terminal diseases. Geethanjali was critically acclaimed and won
10830-465: The standard characters, six characters taken from the Grantha script , which was used in the Tamil region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used to represent sounds not native to Tamil, that is, words adopted from Sanskrit, Prakrit , and other languages. The traditional system prescribed by classical grammars for writing loan-words, which involves respelling them in accordance with Tamil phonology, remains, but
10944-479: The story of an autistic child who changed the lives of people around her. The film proved to be a commercial success and was nominated as India's official entry to the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 63rd Academy Awards . Following Anjali's release, Mani later made another underworld-themed Tamil film, Thalapathi (1991), starring Rajinikanth and Mammootty . The film
11058-632: The story of an orphaned slum-dweller and his rise to top of the Bombay underworld hierarchy . It was included in Time magazine's All-Time 100 Greatest Movies in 2005. Satyajit Ray 's The Apu Trilogy and Guru Dutt 's Pyaasa are the only other Indian films that have appeared in the list. Indian critics dubbed the film as India's answer to The Godfather . Nayakan was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed winning three National Awards— Best Actor , Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction —at
11172-520: The story of how one incident sends the lives of three youths on a collision course and received positive reviews. Mani made the film simultaneously in Hindi as Yuva , his second venture into Bollywood. Ajay Devgn , Abhishek Bachchan , and Vivek Oberoi replaced Surya Sivakumar , R. Madhavan , and Siddharth , respectively in the Hindi version. Unlike Yuva , Aayutha Ezhuthu was appreciated by critics. Mani suffered his first heart attack while shooting Aayutha Ezhuthu . In 2007, Mani made Guru ,
11286-764: The supporting cast. The film followed three children as they battled for complete power of their crime family following their father's unexpected demise. Chekka Chivantha Vaanam opened in September 2018 to positive reviews and was a box office success. His next project was confirmed to be Ponniyin Selvan: I , based on the Indian epic written by Kalki Krishnamurthy . The film has an ensemble cast consisting of Vikram , Karthi , Jayam Ravi , Jayaram , Rahman , Aishwarya Rai , Trisha , Aishwarya Lekshmi , R. Parthiban , Lal , Babu Antony , Ashwin Kakumanu , Prabhu , Sarathkumar , Sobhita Dhulipala , Vikram Prabhu and many more, play
11400-496: The team to portray the role during April 2012. The film subsequently began production in Chennai during early May 2012, with a song shot featuring Vishal and Santhanam alongside Sadha , who was revealed to be making a guest appearance in an item number . Sundar C then chose to shoot some further scenes with Sadha and make her appearance last longer than just for a song sequence. However soon after production began, Sundar chose to alter
11514-517: The word for "here"— iṅku in Centamil (the classic variety)—has evolved into iṅkū in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore , inga in the dialects of Thanjavur and Palakkad , and iṅkai in some dialects of Sri Lanka . Old Tamil's iṅkaṇ (where kaṇ means place) is the source of iṅkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli , Old Tamil iṅkiṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in
11628-526: Was a Tamilian himself, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on 6 June 2004. The socio-linguistic situation of Tamil is characterised by diglossia : there are two separate registers varying by socioeconomic status , a high register and a low one. Tamil dialects are primarily differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. For example,
11742-475: Was a film producer. His elder brother G. Venkateswaran (died 2003) would go on to produce some of his films. His younger brother G. Srinivasan (died 2007), like G. Venkateswaran, would also co-produce some of his films. Mani Ratnam grew up in Madras (now Chennai), along with his siblings and cousins. Despite being a film family, the children were not allowed to watch films as the elders considered them taboo. "As
11856-480: Was also screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. Along with Vasanth , he was instrumental in organizing Netru, Indru, Naalai , a stage musical that marked the first theatre production, with numerous other artistes, to aid The Banyan , an organization that rehabilitates women and children with mental illness. Mani's next film, Kannathil Muthamittal , dealt with the story of
11970-586: Was claimed to be dated to around 580 BCE. John Guy states that Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders from India. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka and on trade goods in Thailand and Egypt. In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BCE with ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions. There are
12084-528: Was created by Lord Shiva . Murugan , revered as the Tamil God, along with sage Agastya , brought it to the people. Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, ultimately descends from the Proto-Dravidian language , which was most likely spoken around the third millennium BCE, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of
12198-668: Was done to ensure that the audience would not be confused with the screenplay and story, adapted from the five books of the epic. The first part, Ponniyin Selvan: I , was released theatrically, on 30 September 2022. The second part released on 28 April 2023. Mani Ratnam grew up watching the films of K. Balachander , Guru Dutt and Sivaji Ganesan . He is greatly influenced by the film-making styles of Akira Kurosawa , Martin Scorsese , Krzysztof Kieślowski , Ingmar Bergman and Mahendran . Unlike most of his contemporaries, Mani Ratnam did not assist anybody in film-making prior to entering
12312-672: Was loosely based on Mahabharata , dealt with the friendship between Karna and Duryodhana portrayed by Rajinikanth and Mammmooty respectively. The film met with both critical acclaim and commercial success upon release. Ilaiyaraaja's musical score and Mani's work were highly appreciated as they both went on to win the Music Director and Best Director awards respectively at the 39th Filmfare Awards . With Thalapathy , Mani ended his long-term association with music director Ilaiyaraaja, bringing in debutant music director A. R. Rahman to score his Tamil classic Roja (1992). The venture
12426-519: Was revealed that the film was complete and Sundar C was putting "finishing touches" to the project. The music was composed by Vijay Antony , collaborating with Vishal for the second time after Vedi and with Sundar for the first time. Vishal sang a song named "My Dear Loveru", which was released as a promotional track in December 2012. Promotional campaigns started for the film in November 2012, with an initial release date of 14 January 2013 announced by
12540-526: Was scored by A. R. Rahman . The film depicted the life of a young couple in a live-in relationship in Mumbai, and was said to be a "reflection of the modern mindset of urban India", dealing with issues such as marriage and traditional values. Made at a small budget of 6 crores, the film achieved widespread critical acclaim and commercial success. His next was Kaatru Veliyidai , starring Karthi , Aditi Rao Hydari and RJ Balaji . The film, set in 1999 during
12654-786: Was subsequently dubbed into Hindi where it gained commercial success and appreciation by critics. It won a number of awards, such as Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration , Political Film Society Awards|Special Award from the Political Film Society , In the Spirit of Freedom Award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival and the Gala Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival . Mani produced his wife's directorial debut film, Indira , and then directed
12768-511: Was successful, earning Mani various awards. Roja , a romantic film, was about terrorism in the Kashmir region. Starring Arvind Swamy and Madhoo , it was nominated for the Golden St. George Award at the 18th Moscow International Film Festival . It became highly popular, gaining an iconic status in Indian cinema and was dubbed into other languages and met similar success in other regions. Mani took
12882-504: Was the lingua franca for early maritime traders, with inscriptions found in places like Sri Lanka , Thailand , and Egypt . The language has a well-documented history with literary works like Sangam literature , consisting of over 2,000 poems. Tamil script evolved from Tamil Brahmi, and later, the vatteluttu script was used until the current script was standardized. The language has a distinct grammatical structure, with agglutinative morphology that allows for complex word formations. Tamil
12996-451: Was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb kil ( கில் ), meaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this verb was used as an aspect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, non-sustained or non-lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ṉ ( ன் ). In Middle Tamil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker – kiṉṟa ( கின்ற ) – which combined
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