5 NE documentaries selected for MIFF
By Partha Pratim Hazarika
GUWAHATI, Dec 9 Five documentary films made by directors hailing from the
North-East India have been selected for the Indian Competitive Section of the
highly-prestigious Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) to be held from
February 3 to 9 next year. These films are Children of the River: The Xihus
of Assam, directed by filmmaker Maulee Senapati, Freedom at The Edge, directed
by Aneisha Sharma, The World of Montu by Ashim Dutta, Distant Rumblings by Bani
Prakash Das, all from Assam, and The Story of the Eastern Protectors by Ronel
Haobam from Manipur.
The 60-year-old MIFF, organised every two years by the Film Division,
Government of India, is considered one of the most prominent festivals for
short, documentary and animation films in Asia.
Maulees Children of the River: The Xihus of Assam, has been produced and
scripted by noted Assamese journalist and writer Sanjoy Hazarika under the
banner of Mimesha Productions.
Shot on locations along the Brahmaputra river, the film looks at how humans and
dolphins have co-existed and how this relationship is breaking down in the face
of economic pressure and poverty. For the first time in the region, it has
captured on camera the secret process used by dolphin hunters to catch them.
The film was recently screened in Guwahati and widely appreciated. It was also
screened at the India International Centre, New Delhi on last month and
received rave reviews.
Freedom at the Edge, produced, scripted and directed by Aneisha Sharma, is the
tragic human story of Machang Lalung, a young man from the Nelie area of
central Assam, who had languished in the Tezpur Mental Hospital as an under
trial prisoner for long 54 years without any trial since the year 1951.
Ashim Dutta, who directs The World of Montu, hails from Dhemaji.
The Indian Competitive Section will also feature New Delhi-based filmmaker
Kobita Joshis internationally-acclaimed Tales from the Margins, a documentary
about the unprecedented protest by the women activists of Manipur when they
disrobed outside the paramilitary headquarters to protest the custodial killing
of a young woman and the epic fast-to-death by Irom Sharmila since November
2000 demanding repeal of AFSPA.
This years MIFF also has a North-East connection in the form of Utpal
Borpujari, the National Award-winning New Delhi-based Assamese journalist being
chosen to be a member of the Critics Jury.
(The Assam Tribune,10.12.2007)
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