Director B Jaya

One of the most prominent and versatile directors of the Telugu film industry was B. Jaya. Alongside working as a director in Andhra Pradesh Cinema, she occasionally appeared on screen playing many roles too. Jaya was born on 11 January 1964 in the city of Hyderabad, Telangana (earlier Andhra Pradesh). She married B.A. Raju who is one of the well-known publicists in the Telugu film industry. He has worked in very well known movies, one of them being Bahubaali: The Beginning. She has always been interested in the world of arts and the works that require imagination. She completed her first post graduation in English Literature from Chennai University. She also held a diploma in Journalism from Chennai University.

Jaya then continued her studies at Chennai and went on to hold another Master’s degree in psychology from Annamalai University. After completing her education, Jaya started to work in Andhra Jyothy which is a Telugu daily newspaper. She was assigned to work in the Jyothi Chitra section, which was dedicated to covering the news and events in Tollywood. Working in this section as an entertainment new writer stirred Jaya’s interest in the world of films in Telugu. She then ventured to work in the Telugu film industry. In 2003, Jaya successfully directed her first movie, which was Chantigadu. This was a critically appraised film movie which proved to be a breakthrough for Jaya in Tollywood. In an industry that was male dominant, this is seen as a win for Jaya.

She is still one of the very few female directors in Tollywood. Her next directorial project was Premikulu, which was released in 2005. Since her debut in 2003, she has directed six movies. Saval, Lovely, and Vaishakam are few of them. Most of her movies were strong and gave valuable messages to the viewers. Lovely was one of the most acclaimed movies ever, directed by B. Jaya. For this movie, she acted not only as the director but also the screenwriter, choreographer and editor too. This movie was released in the year 2012. She has, till date, appeared in over 40 movies. She started acting as early as in the year 1977. She also worked on the Bollywood movie Dil Bole Haddipa! as a secondary writer. The last movie directed by Jaya was Vaishakam which released in the year 2017. Due to a cardiac arrest, B. Jaya passes away on 30 August 2018