Exquisite rapture
Updated On: 05 November, 2023 04:48 AM IST | Mumbai | Meenakshi Shedde
Observe the arduous journeys artists’ teams must undertake, in order to protect independent voices.
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Illustration/Uday Mohite
Dominic Megam Sangma’s Rapture (Rimdogittanga, in the Garo dialect), from Shillong, Meghalaya in the North East, easily establishes him among the finest young Indian filmmakers today, no question. His debut feature Ma’ama (Moan, in Garo, 2018) had already marked him out as an impressive artist to watch out for. That film was deeply personal, about and featuring his family members—his late father, siblings, and locals. With his second feature Rapture, Sangma’s cinema vaults to another level. His concerns are wider, situated in his community but universal—how the politics of fear, as well as the role of religion and the state, can stoke suspicion and hatred, destroying communities—as seen through the eyes of 10-year-old Kasan. It mirrors—and even prophesies—the explosion of ethnic violence in Manipur and other parts of North East India today, and discreetly comments on how the state treats outsiders from beyond India’s borders. Equally importantly, he poetically evokes mesmerising other worlds, while retaining solid control of his craftsmanship. The film is the second in a trilogy that draws from his family and village. Manipuri filmmaker Haobam Paban Kumar’s films, too, have long cautioned against ethnic and state violence in Manipur and North East, including ‘AFSPA, 1958,’ Loktak Lairembee and Nine Hills One Valley.
Rapture comes festooned in glory, acclaimed at the Locarno, Busan, Jio Mami Mumbai Film Festivals and Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles IFFLA, and winner of the Asia Pacific Screen Award, APSA Cultural Diversity Award, in Australia. Significantly, it is an Indo-China co-production, but more accurately an India-China-Qatar-Switzerland-Netherlands coproduction, led by Xu Jianshang (China) and Sangma (India). So, while it is not made under the Indo-China coproduction treaty, its funds and support come from worldwide, including Vision Sud East, Switzerland, Doha Film Institute, Qatar, Hubert Bals Fund, Rotterdam, Busan Asian Film School (Afis, Korea), Film Bazaar, Goa, La Fabrique Cinema at the Cannes Film Festival; Sangma was at the Berlinale Talents, while Xu was at the Tokyo Talents, among others. Not bad for a hyperlocal Garo film from the North East. Observe the arduous journeys artists’ teams must undertake, in order to protect independent voices.
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