Tarun Bhartiya Retrospective
DAY 1 SONGS TO LIVE BY - a cycle of 6 Films (2016)
Direction/Editing
There is no creation without tradition; the 'new' is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past.
Wendell Berry
As they say, the world was sung into existence. The land ended where the songs faded away. What could not be sung or narrated did not exist. People of Khasi, Jaintia & Garo hills have always sung their lives- songs of the world, songs of seeds, songs of the hills, songs of harvest, songs of hunger, songs of desire...
a. BRIEF LIFE OF INSECTS
What makes folk music? Is it something frozen and event friendly? Is it still made in the fields to the bump and grind of physical labour? We are in Umpohwin, a Bhoi village on the Assam – Meghalaya Border in India. Here, Bah Hos Shadap & his friends are threshing their paddy. Threshing in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills involves free and voluntary exchange of labour and today Hos Shadap’s paddy field is the recipient of that voluntary exchange.
As the paddy is pounded, a rhythm emerges inviting a song. Albinus Kharkongor, Umpohwin’s master of rhyme and verse, steps in and takes over. The simple rhythm belies the vast topical territory that Albinus sings. The village’s existing corpus of lyrical anecdotes get taken over by his irreverent wit and improvisation. Longings are cloaked, oppressors are made fun of, dinner is slipped through clumsy fingers and edible roots makes one fart. The language swings from the local dialect to pidgin to one that is plainly imagined.
Hos Shadap and Albinus Kharkongor filter a kind of history through their songs that will remain marginal to the canon of Khasi tribal culture.
Best Sound, MIFF , Official Selection Film South Asia, Kathmandu,
22 mins | Ktien Nongtung with English subtitles
Research : K Mark Swer
Camera : Arwat Challam, Raihun & Tarun Bhartiya
Sound : K Mark Swer & Rangdap Kharshiing
Editing & Direction : Tarun Bhartiya
b. LOVE SONGS OF SOTJAK AND RINGJENG
In the makeshift bamboo house in their shifting cultivation field, A.chik couple Ringjeng T. Marak and Sotjak Ch. Sangma of Selbalgre, Garo Hills celebrate their 45 years of life together with songs and music.
17 mins | A.chik with English subtitles
Research : Somu Ingty & Sembertush Sangma
Camera : Arwat Challam, Sembertush Sangma & Tarun Bhartiya
Associate Director: Sembertush Sangma
Editing & Direction : Tarun Bhartiya
c. ESCAPING MUSEUMS – LAK(H)EMPONG DIARIES
Are folk dances only about tourist festivals and Indian Republic and Independence Day celebrations? Are folk dances subservient to classical forms? Are border cultures loose bricks in the ethnic purity construct of the majority? In Umtlieh, in the disputed territories of Assam & Meghalaya of India, people of the multi ethnic ancient state of Nongtung come together for their annual post harvest dance called Shad Lakhempong. Is it a sacred dance or just about picking up your future mate? Debates continue as people sing their ribald dance music and songs of stolen nights together.
29 mins | Ktien Nongtung and Sohra Khasi with English subtitles
Script : K Mark Swer & Tarun Bhartiya
Associate Directors : K Mark Swer & Arwat Challam
Camera, Editing & Direction : Tarun Bhartiya
d. SONGS & SECRETS IN SADOLPARA
Sadolpara, Garo Hills, India, one of the few villages which still practise the old A.chik Songsarek faith. Bheemsingh is a recent convert to Christianity and yet he holds on to the traditional chants, rituals and stories. He sings while weaving his baskets and he sings while meeting and drinking with his friends in the weekly market.
20 mins | A.chik with English subtitles
Research : Somu Ingty & Sembertush Sangma
Camera : Arwat Challam & Tarun Bhartiya
Associate Director: Sembertush Sangma
Editing & Direction : Tarun Bhartiya
e. SOUNDS FROM THE TRUCK COUNTRY
Sounds are easy to find in Shangpung – both melodic and discordant. Songs too- both traditional and modern, religious and romantic. In local gatherings, Shangpung’s musicians invoke deities for pure fermentation as coal trucks wail in the village’s roads. Manbha Lamare and Heibormi Sungoh of Shangpung village, Jaintia Hills, are in the middle of one such gathering - a ritual called Koo-Iung. Sacred chants and the rhythms of lineage are performed in this house warming ritual but among the many layers of sanctification lies hidden the song and dance form called La Heh. How will it reveal itself?
39 mins | Pnar with English subtitles
Research : Arwat Challam
Script : K Mark Swer & Tarun Bhartiya
Narration : Kyrsoibor Pyrtuh
Camera : Arwat Challam & Tarun Bhartiya
Associate Directors : K Mark Swer & Arwat Challam
Editing & Direction : Tarun Bhartiya
f. KINGS HAVE THEIR RESORTS, PEOPLE HAVE THEIR SONGS
Why do songs die? Can they ever be revived? In Syndai village in the War Jaintia region of Meghalaya, a weeding song called Long Hai hasn’t been sung for 60 years. But in a village brimming with memories, a hierarchy has emerged. Relics in the forests of Syndai are being modernised to sell the image of a glorious, royal past to tourists yet Syngkor Pohplet strains to recall the lines of a song from her agrarian past. This is a past where cycles of cultivation have replaced one another as a matter of survival, and songs are lost in the wake of these life-altering cycles. So, is the loss of a way of life something worth remembering , if so, who should remember it? Should Long Hai be sung anymore? The women of Syndai Lyngkot revisit their memories to decide.
40 mins | War Jaintia & Pnar with English subtitles
Research : H Hamkhein Mohrmen
Translations : Dapmon Syngkor
Script : K Mark Swer & Tarun Bhartiya
Camera : Arwat Challam & Tarun Bhartiya
Associate Directors : K Mark Swer & Arwat Challam
DAY 2
BAD PLACES (2005)
Direction/Camera/Editing
On 15th August India celebrates its independence. On the same day many groups in North East India call for a shutdown protesting against Indian Colonialism. A short film set in Shillong about the contested nature of national liberation. A film in the series Tourist Information for Shillong.
Bad Places - a poem by Robin S Ngangom
Low on the Thrill - a song by The Ceremony from the album Scary Truth
TV Footage - Peitengor Cable News
Camera & Editing - Tarun Bhartiya
Mumbai International Film Festival
La Mana / Not Allowed / मना है (2018)
Direction/Camera/Editing
The streets of Shillong, North East India are fraught with arguments... La Mana (Not Allowed) a common phrase in Khasi localities listing the things, which are not allowed in public places. A Bihari filmmaker married to a Khasi finds himself using the phrase as the title of his new documentary to start discussions on the much-debated topic, the existential crisis of the matrilineal hill tribe. Are the men of the Indian plains stealing Khasi women’s affections? Will influx of outsiders and mixed marriages prove apocalyptic for the indigenous people? Is matrilineality a curse in disguise? Amidst the night filled with rum, music, poetry, local cable tv, social media and love, La Mana / Not Allowed explores the marginal multicultural dreams of Khasi Shillong.
Khasi & English 38 mins
Produced by Films Division with Samaj Pragati Sahyog Associate Director: K Mark Swer Sound Mix : Andrew Lyndem Songs : Sambok Mawnai, Freedom Marba Ñiang, D Mc Drumnoc Animation : Benjamin Syiem & Treibor Mawlong Aerial Photography: Nathaniel Nampui Majaw Local TV: Batesi TV news & entertainment & T7 Camera, Edit & Direction : Tarun Bhartiya
DAY 3
DARJEELING HIMALAYAN RAILWAY (2010)
Direction/Writing
From the Himalayas in the north to the Nilgiris in the south - for a hundred years these little trains have climbed through the clouds and into the wonderful world of Indian hill railways.
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is a line so close to the people that it flows like a river through their lives. The relationship between the train and the people is changing, however, as a new generation of Gurkhas populates these hills, demanding an independent state and fighting for a new identity as they journey into the modern Indian world.
English 60 mins
Produced by BBC 4 and 3Di Television | Research : Rajesh Shinde & Zorba Laloo | Narrator : Bernard Hill | Camera : Ranjan Palit & Apal | Editor : Barry Reynolds | Associate Producer : Pallavi Biswas | Series Producer : Gerry Troyna | Writing & Direction : Tarun Bhartiya
Film Southasia, Mumbai International Film Festival, Royal Television Society Award, Best documentary series 2010
DAY 4
RED ANT DREAM (2013)
Editing / Writing
Let us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist’, the revolutionary patriot had said, almost a hundred years ago, and that forewarning travels into India’s present, as armed insurrection simmers in Bastar, in the troubled heart of central India. But in the east too, beleaguered adivasis from the mineral-rich hills of Odisha come forth bearing their axes, and their songs. And in the north the swelling protests by Punjabi peasants sees hope coagulate–once more–around that iconic figure of Bhagat Singh, revolutionary martyr of the anti-colonial struggle.
But are revolutions even possible anymore? Or have those dreams been ground down into our nightmares? This is a chronicle of those who live the revolutionary ideal in India, a rare encounter with the invisible domain of those whose everyday is a fight for another ideal of the world.
‘Maoism teaches us that self-preservation is possible only through war’ the disembodied voice of an ideologue fills the forest, now peopled by armed guerillas. This subterranean war broke out more than half a century ago, and the continuing battle is shaped not just with bullets and explosives, but also ideas.
‘Population is the center of gravity’, says the officer charged with training policemen in jungle warfare in Bastar, with turning them into soldiers who can take-on the Maoist rebellion – ‘whichever side the population tilts, that side wins’.
This is the struggle that the Indian Prime Minister has referred to as the ‘single greatest internal security threat to the nation’. And as if in answer, the words of the radical Punjabi poet Pash return to haunt us – ‘If the security of the land calls for a life without conscience… then the security of the land is a threat to us’. His words draw us back into a zone of conscience, of those who resolutely resist the inequalities and injustices of the present, in defence of another utopian ideal of the world.
120 minutes | Language : Gondi, Oriya, Punjabi with English subtitles | Directed by Sanjay Kak | Written by Sanjay Kak, Tarun Bhartiya | Music - Word Sound Power / Delhi Sultanate & Chris McGuiness | Cinematography - Sanjay Kak, Ranjan Palit, Setu Pandey | Edited by Tarun Bhartiya | Sound Design - Madhu Apsara
