Marketing Sonam Movie will be biggest challenge
Ahsan Muzid, whose film on polyandry among yak shepherds in Arunachal Pradesh will be showcased at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) this month, says his biggest challenge is marketing it.
“Sonam” (The Fortunate One), of two-hour duration, is the first feature film made in Monpa, a dialect of the Indo-Tibetan branch of languages, with English sub-titles.
Based on a popular Assamese novel by the same name, written by Sahitya Akademi winner Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi, the film will represent the country in the Asian, African and Latin American competition section of the 37th IFFI to be held at Panaji in Goa from Nov 23 to Dec 3.
“The film is the simple story of a simple man. But the unfortunate thing is that this kind of movies is not accepted by the general audience,” the debutant director said.
“These films find a place only among select audiences. Finding the right market will be my biggest challenge,” Muzid told IANS over phone from Guwahati.
“It was a tough job. It took 45 days of gruelling trekking and travelling at heights of 8,000-15,000 feet to complete the film,” he added.
Another interesting feature is that most of the 27 actors are first-timers.
“Tashi Lhamo was chosen to play the lead role of Sonam. Haggi D. Appa and Sonam Palzer got the roles of the two men, Lobsang and Pema Wangchu.
“The producers had to train a group of locals in basic histrionics before the shooting. A talent hunt workshop was also held,” he said.
Muzid, who started his career as a member of the Indian People’s Theatre Association in 1978, said his aim was to show the movie to the entire nation.
“I want the people of India to know about these lesser-known but important facts,” he said of the film, which is a collaboration of Itanagar-based public charitable trust Mountain Hive and Garima Films.
Muzid says his wife, who is an amateur mountaineer and production designer of the movie, helped him to make the film on a shoestring budget of Rs.5.million.
“The film is all about the lifestyle of Brokpas (yak herd among the Monpa tribes of Arunachal Pradesh) in the high-altitude Himalayas. It deals with the subject of love, hatred and jealousy that can breed between two husbands of a Monpa woman.
“The Brokpas are pastoral nomads as their existence depends upon yaks only. The system of polyandry came to the community to save the cattle from being divided among brothers,” he said.
It is a custom in that region for a woman to have more than one husband. Muzid depicts a unique situation where the husband offers to accept his wife’s lover as co-husband.
But the presence of the new man makes the first husband very lonely. Sonam, the wife, suffers silently, too. Being a Buddhist, she opts for her own death in a heartbreaking ending.
— IANS
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