Combo image of Veteran director late IV Sasi and director M. PadmakumarAce filmmaker I.V. Sasi, who passed away on Tuesday, is known for many firsts in Mollywood – be it about changing the trend in which movies were known only by its hero, making films that were centered on antiheroes, or employing crowd as a significant element of the plot.
He was a director, who saw hundreds of his 150 odd movies run over 100 days and was arguably the best filmmaker of his time. The auteur had collaborated with almost all outstanding scriptwriters and actors of the time.
M. Padmakumar, one of his proteges who joined him as assistant for the film Bhoomika, remembers the director who treated each film as his first film.
"Even while doing his 150th movie, he maintained the sincerity, keenness and the zeal with which one would do his first film, and as his disciples, that is what we wanted to learn from him. He used to be very cordial with youngsters who worked under him. He taught us many things, which we put into practice even today," Padmakumar ruminates a wonderful guru-shishya relation Sasi had with all his disciples.
As to what had struck him the most about the Sasi, the Shikar director says, “It was the way he dealt with difficult situations. I still remember one incident. While shooting a scene for Inspector Balram, the filming was being done by blocking a road. The location was flooded with a barrage of crowd and the situation was getting out of control. But Sasiyettan kept his cool and easily handled it."
Sasi had ventured into all kinds of films and treated them all with equal elan, whether it's a mega canvas film like Devasuram or a small, modest film like Abharanacharthu (not yet released), which revolves around teenage love.
What enabled him to shift from one set to the other finishing his schedules so swiftly was his clarity of vision. "He never had any confusion about shots or how to go about it. A master craftsman, he always had a perfect plan and everything went accordingly. That's what enabled him to move from one location to another. For example, Devasuram was shot in just 44 days. If it were any other director, a minimum of 75 days would have gone into it," he says.
Padmakumar cannot point out just one or two occasions that can be termed as memorable in his long years of association with Sasi since there are many and sundry. "I have worked with several other directors but it was Sasiyettaan who influenced me the most and it has benefited my career," he says.
