Interview

Restoring Joymoti

In 2005, the government of Assam celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Assamese film industry. At the same time, the film that had started it all, Joymoti, was getting its own septuagenarian birthday present – a new life. 25 years ago, Altaf Mazid, a Guwahati-based filmmaker, saw a documentary on Jyotiprasad Agarwalla. Researching further on the film over the next couple of years, Mazid increasingly began to look at Joymoti as not just an interesting state artefact, but also a nationally significant piece of Indian culture. That convinced him that Joymoti had to be made available to a wider audience. In an interview with Himal Southasian, he said that the film itself had been in very bad shape; if digitally restored and nationally distributed, however, he feels it is capable of adding a new chapter in the history of Indian cinema – particularly on the subject of ‘regional reality’.

Where were the original reels found?
In the early 1970s, Hridayananda Agarwalla, Jyotiprasad’s youngest brother, found seven reels of the lone print of Joymoti while cleaning the junk out of his garage. Jyotiprasad’s film venture had cost his family’s tea garden huge losses. The other brothers (except Hridayananda, he was too young then) as well as his greater family did not give a damn about the artist-philosopher. The condition of the reels was one of near-depletion, but Hridayananda Agarwalla made an extremely timely and wise decision. He engaged Bhupen Hazarika – another one of the other great cultural figures that Assam has produced – as director for a long documentary, Rupkonwar Jyotiprasad aru Joymoti (1976), in which the reels were incorporated. That way the reels were saved.

How did you go about restoring the reels?
I attended my first International Film Festival of India in 1986, in Hyderabad. There, I saw a restored old French film, and started thinking about the restoration of Joymoti. I tried several times to persuade the related people, as well as the government. In 2000, when I had my own editing set up, I began thinking about making a subtitled copy of Joymoti. I got a video copy of Bhupen Hazarika’s documentary and pulled the Joymoti portion into my computer. The reels were disorganised and in an as-they-were-found condition. Furthermore, several portions of the film were made to freeze, in order to accommodate extra voiceovers. Most of these are from Bhupen Hazarika’s voice. I deleted those patches, and re-edited the pieces back into order. The subtitling part took the most time. Pradip Acharya, a professor of English, did the English translation of the dialogue and songs. We spent many weeks of sleepless nights – the dialogues were quite inaudible.

What part of the process did you enjoy the most?
The song at the end, Flow on you water of Luit… Jyotiprasad Agarwalla memorialises Joymoti’s death with a sequence on the river ‘Luit’ (later changed to ‘Brahmaputra’ by New Delhi) and a background song. I found that portion the most memorable. While editing, and still when I see the film, I feel a great sense of excitement. What a remarkable sequence it is!

Is the entirety of the film now restored?
Just the seven reels, or 60 minutes – a shorter version of the two-hour-plus original. But that is sufficient to know the film completely. I am happy that the reels were found that way.

How much money did the process take? Did you have assistants?
Just INR 16,000. It was solely a labour of love. Only I, my wife Zabeen, and Pradip Acharya, who did the translations, are involved.

What has been the reaction to the new restoration?
The ice has not yet melted. The people of Assam have been long deprived of seeing Joymoti, and the subtitled version will help Assamese and non-Assamese people understand the dialogues and songs. But as usual, the government has little interest in works that do not serve their immediate political agenda. I even offered our local TV station, Guwahati Doordarshan, a free telecast of the subtitled version, but they have no place for programmes that cannot generate commercial sponsorship. The only public showing until now was held in Delhi on 20 January 2004, the birthday of Jyotiprasad Agarwalla.

What would you hope to be able to do with Joymoti?
A digitally-corrected print is required for any international release, the estimated cost of which is INR 3.5 million. The art-house circuit is always interested in seeing such old marvels. I have sent copies of the restored version to the Berlin and Cannes film festivals, but they have found it very difficult to judge the film from the video copy. Over the last 25 years, Joymoti has become a fulltime obsession for me. In each viewing, I discover something else. Now that obsession has turned to obtaining a full 35mm restored version, so that the film can be appreciated everywhere.

Write to Altaf Mazid at tayaba@sancharnet.in