Joymoti (1935)

Original title

জয়মতী

Directed by

Jyoti Prasad Agarwala

Genre

biographical film

Country

British Raj

Runtime

57 min

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

The film is about Joymoti Konwari, a 17th century Ahom princess. It tells the story of her life based on a play by Lakshminath Bezbaroa.

historicalseriousslow-burnstatelyearnestsombervisually simplemeasured

What happens

Joymoti is a 1935 Indian film widely considered to be the first Assamese film ever made. Based on Lakshminath Bezbaroa's play about the 17th-century Ahom princess Joymoti Konwari, the film was produced and directed by the noted Assamese poet, author, and film-maker Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, and starred Aideu Handique and acclaimed stage actor and playwright Phani Sarma. The film, shot between 1933 and 1935, was released by Chitralekha Movietone on 10 March 1935 and marked the beginning of Assamese cinema. Joymoti was screened at the 50th International Conference of the Society For Cinema and Media Studies (SCMC) of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, United States in March 2011. Other screenings include: India-Bangladesh Joint Celebration of 100 Years of Indian Cinema, Dhaka (2012) UCLA's Centre for India and South Asia Studies, Los Angeles (April 2010) Osian-Cinefan's 10th Film Festival of Asian and Arabic Cinema, New Delhi (2008) Filmbüro Baden Württemberg's Internationales Indisches Filmfestival, Stuttgart (2006) Asiaticafilmidale (Encounters with Asian Cinema), Rome (2006) Munich Film Festival (2006). Although never a commercial success, Joymoti was noted for its political views and the use of a female protagonist, something almost unheard of in Indian cinema of the time. The film was the first Indian talkie to have used Dubbing and Re-recording Technology, and the first to engage with "realism" and politics in Indian cinema. The original print containing entire length of the film was thought to be lost after India's division in 1947. However, in 1995, documentary film director Arnab Jan Deka managed to recover entire footage of the lost film at a Studio in Bombay in intact condition, and reported back the matter to Assam Government apart from writing about this recovery in Assamese daily Dainik Asam and English daily The Assam Express. Meanwhile, some reels of another remaining print of the film maintained by Hridayananda Agarwala has been restored in part by Altaf Mazid. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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