Vandana Menon and Debashish Nandi’s 'Morisika', for a film so contemplative, has a lot to say. Weaved within the oral and choral aspects of the film, which recently won the Best Film award at the International Folklore Film Festival held in Thrissur, lie the beating hearts and lives of the people who touch the story and those the story touches.
The title 'Morisika', of Assamese origin, translates to ‘mirage’; in Nandi’s words, “This name came to us when we were halfway through our filming. For us, it holds two meanings; first, the way each story we chased led us to many more and morphed into something else as we got closer, much like a mirage in the open plains.” Menon, a Bengalurean, continues, “Secondly, it is an inward journey of memory and loss and things shifting into something that brings new ways of remembering and hope.”
Indeed, ways of remembering might be deemed as the thematic crux of the film. In this attempt of historicisation, even beyond the plethora of ‘human’ accounts the film is composed of, a sombre voice flows: Brahmaputra’s. As opposed to the more common patriarchal tendency of feminising natural reserves, this river is considered male.
Nandi says, “In Hindu mythology, Brahmaputra is the son of Lord Brahma. It seemed only fitting that the river would be male and that its voice would be of Dimbeshwar Da, a fishing village elder from Kolibari in Tezpur who, when not fishing, writes and directs Bhaona: an endangered form of community theatre.” Nandi stresses, “There could be other tellings that look at the river differently, given that Assam has diverse communities whose relationships to it include different origin myths. We went with what we heard most often from different communities.”
Bengaluru-based musician Jeevan Antony, with his brother, Mathew, scored the music for the film; talking about the process, he says,“I really enjoyed the collaborative nature of this project; it felt like a conversation we were navigating together.”
As the team cherishes the win at the International Folklore Film Festival, Nandi hopes for a wider release. “The first thing we did was take it back to Gauripur, Tezpur and the cattle camp for screenings. Apart from that, it’s slowly beginning to do the film festival circuit. We would definitely like to release it to a larger audience,” he says.