New Delhi: A film about the lifestyle and traditions like polyandry practiced by the little-known Monpa tribe at heights of 15,000 feet in Arunachal Pradesh – made in the Monpa dialect – was among the 40 feature and non-feature films picked for the Indian Panorama at the 37th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) this year. The IFFI will be held in in Goa next month.
Upcoming filmmaker Ahsan Muzid's movie Sonam is all about love, hatred and jealousy between the two husbands of a Monpa woman. The film is a true tribute to the life and lore of the Monpas, a colourful tribe inhabiting the high altitudes of Arunachal Pradesh bordering China. This is the first full-length movie to be made in the Monpa dialect.
Ehsan (Raju) Muzid and his wife Archana Muzid made the movie on a shoe-string budget of Rs 50 lakh with help from Mountain Hives, a public charitable trust.
The story, based on a novel set in 1970s, highlights the traditional practice of polyandry among the tribe. The film tries to trace the roots of the tradition, under which a Monpa woman becomes the common wife of all the brothers of a family to which she is married, in the rearing of yak, an endangered animal.
In fact, the juries have recommended Sonam along with Tamil Film Srigaram to represent India in the Asian, African and Latin American Competition section of the IFFI-2006.
The lineup of 20 feature films also includes Bollywood hit Corporate by Madhur Bhandarkar, Kannada filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli's Nayi Neralu and Rituparno Ghosh's Bengali film Dosar among others.
Missed Call by Mridul Toolsidas and Vinay Subramanian will open the panorama section, which has five Malayalam films and three Tamil films. The opening film of the non-feature section would be 'And the World Remained Silent' directed by Ashok Pandut.
The juries watched 96 feature films and 102 non-feature films over a period of 16 days to make the selection. The Indian Panorama selection is an integral part of the Film Festival.
Next page: Categories in feature films and non-feature films
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IFFI is to be held at Panaji (Goa) from November 23 to December 03, 2006.
This year the feature films jury was headed by the noted filmmaker Saeed Akhtar Mirza and had its members noted Tamil filmmaker Vasanth S M, renowned Marathi actress Aditi Deshpandey, veteran Assamese filmmaker Pulak Gogoi and film festival organisers George Mathew from Kerala and U Radhakrishnan from Delhi as members.
The non-feature films jury was headed by veteran Bengali film director Raja Mitra and had Iftekhar Ahmed, Director Jamia Mass Communication Research Centre, noted filmmakers Vinod Ganatra and Anjan Bose as members.
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