Shilpika is a tribute to Boardo’s short film Mizo Culture

Saying that the smallest pebble can cause the biggest wave, the echo in the short film of Shilpika Boardoloi reveals the echo. Mau: The Spirit Dreams of CherouWhich has won the National Award for the best first film of a director in the non-female film category this year. For a recent public screening in Delhi, Shilpika says that the eight -minute film is “fantasy of two parallel memories”. Remembering a death and a painful history, which is an ecological famine caused by bamboo flowers in Mizoram. “It was the inspiration behind choosing a bamboo-human story.” The second story, she shares, is the forgotten interacted memory of the soul that runs Chero or Bamboo dance. This is the story mentioned in the film.

Shilpika, founder of the Brahmaputra Cultural Foundation, says, “After the death of a woman during the birth of a child, her soul, craving for her child, becomes restless. It is that the community gathers to dance – a ritual that calms her soul and helps in transition,” Brahmaputra is the founding scripture, “Brahmaputra is the founding scripture of the cultural foundation, which is protected by the Brahmaputra cultural foundation, which is protected by the Brahmaputra cultural foundation Wants to promise.

Working with a small team and relying completely on natural light, he has adopted a “visual anthropological approach”, where the camera becomes a partner in the storytelling rather than being a distant supervisor, with the artist.

Shilpika is a versatile performing artist who counts the owner of different forms, such as Rathindra Sinha, Darshan Juveri, Indira PP Bora, Leela Samson and Rashid Ansari, as their guru. “Even there is still a situation of motion. The movement is present in all events of indigenous life. I think stories that have been told are valuable. They are shared through agitation, silence, breath and ecological intelligence of land.”

Considering the origin of bamboo dance, Shilpika states that in cultures, the dances of mourning are in existence – where movements help souls to infection later.

What has changed over time, Shilpika says, is the establishment of a living human as a superior existence. “Now there is no mourning on the death of a tree or any non-human. Today, our actions have taken us far away from the ground and whatever is internal for it.”

Shilpika sees the film production process as an extension of its art practice. , Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The symbol of the film is striking, especially in his visual depiction of the fetus and mother. For the craftsmanship, the design of birth and death is central. “I choreographed movements around birth, frantic separation and peace to portray the infection of the soul – reflecting the demise of bamboo during the tight,” she explains. ,

In Mizo, ‘Mau’ means bamboo, and a pecular species is known only once every 40 years – it blooms immediately after blooming. Shilpika finds it deep poetic, which depicts a metaphor parallel to a mother’s death during delivery. She also notes that a peak bamboo played an important role in the formation of Mizoram as a state.

Shilpika, a recipient of Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puruskar of Music Natak Academy for experimental/ contemporary dance, says that the journey of film production was a jump of faith in many levels and sees the process as an extension of his art practice. “In films, I have got the integration of artist, choreographer, cinematographer, visual designer, writer, dreamer and anthropologist. In me. I am in love that this medium allows me to integrate.”