Joymoti (1935 film)

This article is about an Assamese film made in 1935. For other uses, see Joymoti.

Joymoti
A screenshot of the film
(actress Aideu Handique as Joymoti)
Directed byJyoti Prasad Agarwala
Written byLakshminath Bezbaroa (play)
Produced byJyoti Prasad Agarwala
StarringAideu Handique
Phunu Barooah
CinematographyBhopal Shankar Mehta
Music byJyoti Prasad Agarwala
Distributed byChitralekha Movietone
Release date
  • 10 March 1935 (1935-03-10)
CountryIndia
LanguageAssamese

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,[1] was released by Chitralekha Movietone on 10 March 1935 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.[2]

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,[3][4] and the first to engage with "realism" and politics in Indian cinema.[5] 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.[6]

  1. ^ Tamuli, Babul (2002) ""The making of Joymoti"". Archived from the original on 27 October 2009. Retrieved 18 March 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), The Assam Tribune.
  2. ^ "The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Northeast |Joymoti goes Hollywood". Archived from the original on 25 October 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
  3. ^ Staff Reporter (7 February 1995). "'The first ever Indian dubbed film was Assamese'". Vol. 5, no. 125. The North East Times.
  4. ^ Jyoti Prasad Agarwala and his films Archived 14 March 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Mazid, Altaf (2006), "Joymoti : The first radical film of India" Archived 8 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine, Himal Magazine, March 2006.
  6. ^ Interview with Altaf Mazid, "Restoring Joymoti" Archived 11 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine, Himal Magazine, March 2006.