From Our Correspondent
GUWAHATI: “Mayong: Myth/Reality”, a short film directed by Utpal Borpujari and produced by
Jayanta Goswami, will be archived by the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) of Great Britain and Ireland so that researchers and academicians associated with cultural ethnography studies can access the documentary. It what could be termed as welcome news for the Assamese film industry, a communication to this effect has been sent to Borpujari by Susanne Hammacher, film officer with the RAI.
“We will take the film up to Edinburgh and it will be available in the video library and for any future visitors at the RAI for consultation,” she informed Borpujari.
The film, produced under the banner of Darpan Cine Production, will be made available for visitors and added to the archive in a few weeks’ time from now. The film, which revolves around the tradition of magic as believed to be practiced by a section of people from Mayong, a big village located about 30 kilometers away from Guwahati city, was recently screened at the 5th Cine ASA Guwahati International Film Festival and the India International Centre, New Delhi, has also been selected for the Long Documentary (Non-Competitive) Section of the 6th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) to be held in Thiruvananthapuram in June and the Gandhinagar International Film Festival to be held in the Gujarat capital in September.
The RAI’s ethnographic film library, which the film will be a part of is one of the world’s largest and most important such archives. “All films included in the library are screened by the specialist Film Committee, guaranteeing a standard of excellence unparalleled elsewhere. Growing numbers of film company researchers and broadcasters now consult the RAI film materials,” according to the RAI’s description of the archive.
The RAI is the world’s longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology in its broadest and most inclusive sense. It seeks to combine a distinguished tradition of scholarship stretching back over more than 150 years with the active provision of services to contemporary anthropology and anthropologists. The institute has a privileged link with the Anthropology Library of the British Museum.