Frames from the Northeast

Understanding Bobbeeta Sharma’s comprehensive overview of Assamese cinema in English.

October 04, 2014 05:09 pm | Updated May 23, 2016 07:34 pm IST

The Moving Image and Assamese Culture: Joymoti, Jyotiprasad Agarwala and Assamese Cinema

The Moving Image and Assamese Culture: Joymoti, Jyotiprasad Agarwala and Assamese Cinema

Just four years after Alam Ara , the first Hindi talkie, hit the screens in Mumbai came Joymati in Assamese (1935). The recently-published The Moving Image and Assamese Culture: Joymoti, Jyotiprasad Agarwala and Assamese Cinema (OUP) by Guwahati-based actor and TV show host Bobbeeta Sharma investigates how director Jyotiprasad Agarwala converted his two-year mission into reality. Perhaps the first comprehensive attempt in English to give a well-researched overview of Assam’s film industry — interspersed with rare old photographs of films, posters, filmmakers and actors — Sharma highlights how an ‘outsider’ turned the novel medium into a vehicle of cultural assertion of the people he embraced as his own. The struggle of Joymati’s actor Aideu Handique is used to highlight society’s posturing towards women. Just 14, Handique was duped into acting. She was lured into a waiting barge on the river near her village, which sailed the moment she got in. When she returned after the shooting she was ostracised for not being ‘a good girl’. A rickety bamboo outhouse was built in the periphery of her parental home for her. Aidue died a spinster in 2002. Worse, she never saw the original film.In this interview, Sharma, also the Chairperson of Assam State Film Development Corporation (ASFDC), talks about her book and what led her to write this. Excerpts:

What drew you to the subject?

In 1995, while teaching in Assam’s Pandu College, I enrolled myself as a research fellow in the Department of Film Studies in Jadavpur University, Kolkata, under the supervision of the Department head Mihir Bhattacharya. I wanted to research on cinema history and Assamese cinema particularly. But I soon got busy hosting TV serials and including the popular Bidexot Apun Manuh on Assamese NRIs, which needed a lot of foreign travel. I had to give up my job and the PhD. But I continued collecting material on the subject with the hope of writing a book. It took me 18 years to complete it but I guess better late than never.

You see Joymoti as an attempt to assert Assamese cultural identity.

I wanted to trace the history of Assamese cinema through the history of our performing arts. Oral traditions, folklore, folk songs and dances were a part of everyday life. With the influx of British imperialism and Bengali culture in its wake, what was once popular gradually came to be looked down. There was also a positive side. It exposed the educated Assamese to the Indian Renaissance. The Assamese youth who went to Kolkata for higher studies drew inspiration from it and began expressing their views on Assamese nationality. This backdrop had a profound influence on Jyotiprasad to connect to a ‘meaningful past’.

His lineage also played a role. His great-grandfather was Navrangram Agarwala, a Marwari trader from Rajasthan who came to Assam in 1829 and embraced Sankaradeva’s Vaishnavism. His son Haribilash Agarwala published the religious texts of Sankaradeva. Jyotiprasad’s paternal uncle Chandrakumar Agarwala was a poet who launched the journal Jonaki , which heralded the age of romanticism in Assamese literature. Jyotiprasad himself was a poet, dramatist, musician, sculptor and filmmaker. So when the Indian film industry was still nascent, Jyotiprasad chose to appeal to Assam’s ‘meaningful past’ through folk narrative of Ahom princess Joymoti. The film showcased all that was essentially Assamese: the sets, the outfits, the outdoor scenes, Japi dance, Bhaona performance, the songs … Joymoti thus became a vehicle of cultural assertion of a people subjugated by colonial and cultural imperialism.

Is the original print available?

Only eight reels were preserved by Jyotiprasad’s brother Hridayananda Agarwala who later gave it to Bhupen Hazarika to make the documentary Rupkonwar Jyoitprasad Aru Joymoti in 1976. This print is available in the film archive of ASFFDC.

Was it easy to find research material?

I recorded an interview with the actor who played Joymati, Aideu Handique, and spoke to Hriyananda Agarwala who was closely associated with the film. I acquired some valuable original newspaper clippings through writer Jimoni Choudhury. I read old Assamese books, magazines, newspaper clippings, as the film generated interest while it was being made and received critical acclaim later. People like the former Chief Minister Gopinath Bordoloi and Lakshminath Bezbarua wrote newspaper articles about it.  

Agarwala once said that the Assamese film industry needs the support of Assamese public. What would you say to that?

True. Earlier, people used to watch Assamese films but that has waned, partly due to the lack of good Assamese films and partly due to competition from TV and Hindi movies. Assamese films have to keep their basic ‘Assamese-ness’ intact to attract audience. However, sometimes, even good films are not watched. About nine years ago, Jahnu Barua said that he would not make an Assamese film because he didn’t get the desired audience support even after his film won national and international acclaim.

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