Rono Hills, Mar 20: Rajiv Gandhi University will be hosting a film festival titled “Borderland Narratives: A Festival of Films from Contemporary Northeast India” which will focus exclusively on the films and filmmakers of the Northeast from March 23-25.
The festival will be aiming to act as a platform for filmmakers, academics, activists and youths from this region to explore issues of heritage, identity and change from a contemporary perspective. There would be 19 films, from all the states in the region and the 16 participating filmmakers will also have an opportunity of extended interactions with the audience.
Festival Director, Professor S Simon John of the Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies (AITS), while releasing the list of films to be screened, said that the audience will truly get a taste of cutting edge cinema of the region as many eminent filmmakers from the region are attending the festival.“It’s not just viewing films, but the discussions and interactions that will follow which is important to us at the festival. The scholars, particularly from the social sciences, will experience how the visual medium is also a key component of how society and culture is being represented,” he said.
Films being invited for the festival include multiple award winning feature films like Haobam Paban Kumar’s Loktak Lairembi (Manipur), Sanjib Dey’s III Smoking Barrels (Assam), Dominic Sangma’s Ma.Ama (Meghalaya), Karma Takapa’s Ralang Road & Dawa Lepcha’s Dhokbu (Sikkim), KC Zoherliana’s Sulhnu (Mizoram), Tiakimzuk Aier’s Nana (Nagaland), Sunil’s Kalai’s Kwthom Kothoma (Tripura) and Nyago Ete’s Orunasol Man and Raja Tok Camdir’s Aisa Kyun from Arunachal.
The festival also has a line-up of award winning documentaries and short films that include Chori by Tribeni Rai (Sikkim), Because We Did Not Choose by Wangphran Diengdoh (Meghalaya), Bloody Phanek by Sonia Nephram (Manipur), Songs of the Blue Hills by film-critic and filmmaker Utpal Borpujari, Where We Bled For Our Land by Napolean RZ Thanga (Mizoram), Haja by Emang Debbarma (Tripura), Songs of the Mist by Kivini Shohe (Nagaland). The Mighty Brahmaputra by Bappa Roy for IGNCA and Those Songs and Lullabies I used To Sing by Kombong Darang for CFEL, RGU will also be screened.
Another key feature of the festival is the in-competition segment called ‘Our Lives, Our Stories’ for short films of up to 5 minutes with the theme ‘Vanishing Roots: Art, Culture and Folklore’ for which 6 films have been shortlisted for screening. A workshop on ‘Film Research in Archives and the Community’ to be conducted by Wangphran Deingdoh, the director of the invited film Because We Did Not Choose will be conducted. The invited filmmakers will also participate in a panel discussion on ‘Films and The Idea of The New North East.’

“The thought behind the festival is not just to bring the films to audiences in our state, but also to explore how there are other ways to look at traditional communities,” shared the festival director Moji Riba. 

Borderland Narratives is really an exploration of that new space where the communities of the region are emerging from the ‘museumization’ of our cultures to its contemporizing, he added.
The festival is being organized under the stewardship of the RGU Vice-Chancellor Professor Saket Kushwaha, and fronted by AITS in collaboration with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, North East Regional Centre (Guwahati).
RGU’s Centre for Endangered Languages, Department of Mass Communication, Mishmi Takin Adventure Gears and the Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation (CCRD) are the festival partners. RGU Press Release

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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