Kannada stars enthrall audience at Vishwa Kannada Sammelana

The Kannada film industry's entertainment programme has turned out to be the main highlight of the Vishwa Kannada Sammelana (VKS, World Kannada Summit), which was held at Kittur Rani Chennamma ground in Belgaum from 11th to 13th March. The event named 'Namma Abhimana-Chandanavana', which was organised by musician Hamsalekha, enthralled the huge gathering of 75000 spectators.

The Kannada film fraternity arrived bit late on Friday morning. So they could not take part in the procession of VKS. Hamsalekha, the Sutradhara of the event, was clad in white Petha and Dhothi and he seemed to be bit upset for giving his team a late entry on the grand stage on the Friday evening. But that did not deter his team from enlightening the audience. Nearly 1000 people from Sandalwood including 200 dancers and artists, 250 people from music industry, 60 makeup artists, a few directors, producers and technicians attended the event to make it a grand success.

'Namma Abhimana-Chandanavana' began with the dance for late Dr Rajkumar's song by a mimicry artist. Later, Shivaraj Kumar, Puneet Rajkumar, Ramesh Aravind, V Ravichandran, Ganesh, Darshan, Upendra, Shashikumar, Ravichetan, Aniruddh, Naveen Krishna, Tarun Sudhir, Ajith, Doddanna, Dr Bharathi Vishnuvardhana, Abhinaya Sharade Jayanti, Anu Prabhakar, Radhika Gandhi, Harshika Poonacha and several other Kannada stars shook their legs for the hit songs of Kannada films. Another highlight of the event was comedy kings Rangayan Raghu, Sadhu Kokila and Bullet Prakash's dance for the popular Kannada song 'Kuladalli Kilyavado Huchchappa...', which showed that there is only one religion in Karnataka and that is Kannadiga.

Besides songs and dances, a few popular Kannada plays were also exhibited by the Kannada stars. Real star Upendra appeared as King Krishna Deveraya and delivered the victory speech, which was given by the king in 18th century. Challenging star Darshan, who is doing a movie on revolutionary freedom fighter Sangolli Rayanna, once again reminded the bravery of Rayanna through the play Rani Kittur Chennamma. Amidst all these hair-raising programmes, the absence of Kicha Sudeep and Golden girl Ramya was clearly visible on the occasion.

However, Kannada film artistes departed Belgaum soon after the event, but they undertook another mission. On their way back to Bangalore, the Sandalwood celebrities visited cities like Hubli, Ranibennur, Chitradurga and Tumkur and held several entertainment programmes to spread the message of Vishwa Kannada Sammelana. Meanwhile, they also appealed to the public not to encourage pirated audio and video cassettes and urged them to watch Kannada films in theatres in the interest of Kannada film industry.