Tags:
Journalism of Courage
WHAT do we do with a film, released way back in 1935, that too in remote Assam? Well, if you are as crazy as Altaf Majid, a government engineer who makes documentaries in his spare time, then you retrieve whatever is available of it, put it in order, give it a digital makeover, take it to a world audience and say: Look, this was not just what a daredevil called Jyotiprasad Agarwala did over 71 years ago amid all sorts of difficulties, but this is also India8217;s first political film and its first feminist film.
Joymoti was actually presented to a world audience at Stuttgart earlier this month, when it featured in the 8216;Classics of Indian Cinema8217; category in the third 8216;Bollywood and Beyond8217; festival of films. Audiences were reportedly awestruck, especially when they learnt that it was in Germany8217;s own UFA Studios where Jyotiprasad8212;also regarded as the father of modern Assamese art and culture8212;spent six months learning the art of filmmaking.
Joymoti was made in the early 1930s in a makeshift studio that was actually the main factory-cum-warehouse of a tea estate called Bholaguri, some 340 km from Guwahati. To preserve his raw stock and exposed stock in that remote location, Jyotiprasad had to ship huge blocks of ice up the Brahmaputra from Kolkata.
What Majid took to Stuttgart is only a 60-minute digital version of the original work: Only seven reels of it survive as part of a documentary crafted by Bhupen Hazarika in the early 1970s. Majid also cobbled together Jyotiprasad8217;s second film Indramalati and some footage from the filmmaker8217;s own life. All of it was subtitled in English by well-known translator Pradip Acharya for the global audience.
8216;8216;Jyotiprasad was the only political filmmaker of pre-independent India, though there were many in post-independent India, starting with Ritwik Ghatak. Above all, Joymoti is a nationalist film in its attempts to create a cultural world using the elements of Assamese society. It is the only work of its kind of that period,8217;8217; claims Majid.
THOUGH very little study8212;more importantly, comparative study8212;has been done on Jyotiprasad the filmmaker, Majid claims that the pioneer of Assamese films tried to follow the doctrine of cinematic realism as expressed by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov although back then, the term in vogue was 8216;innovative cinema8217;.
8216;8216;Kuleshov demanded that all things theatrical be kept away from films to make way for documentary truth, montage and real-life material,8217;8217; contends Majid.
Contentwise too, Joymoti was innovative, focusing on the eponymous legendary 17th century Assamese princess who died after being tortured by a puppet king. Joymoti bore the ill treatment silently to protect her husband, who had fled as the king wanted to eliminate his rival for the throne. The oppression and passive resistance of the film8217;s story paralleled the situations prevalent in India during the British rule of the 1930s.
8216;8216;Joymoti is wonderfully realistic, so much so that not only did it do away with theatrical style of acting, but also involved a large number of people who had never acted on stage, let alone seen a film,8217;8217; points out Majid. 8216;8216;Moreover, it is also probably India8217;s first feminist film. Three major characters of the film are women8212;Joymoti herself, her close friend Seuti, and the king8217;s mother8212;and all of them are against the royal court8217;s politics.8217;8217;
