Singeetham Srinivasa Rao and Kamal Haasan: A look back at one of Indian cinema’s iconic duos

In a prolific career spanning six decades, auteur filmmaker Singeetham Srinivasa Rao , who passed away last night, made countless films with stalwarts of the Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi film industries. However, Singeetham’s career cannot be discussed without mentioning the films he made with Rajkumar and Kamal Haasan .

In particular, the filmmaker seems to have found a creative twin in Kamal, as their appetite for offbeat stories and aptitude for experimentation led to some of the greatest works in Indian cinema. They worked on seven titles together, starting with the 1979 Telugu action-comedy, Sommokadidhi Sokokadidhi , in which Kamal played dual roles (the double action becoming the foundation that would later motivate the duo to pull off four lookalikes in Michael Madana Kama Rajan ). However, of the seven titles, four films clearly stand out to define the real value of the collaboration.