Documentary film The Bodo-Fight for Identity to hit the screens soon

Our Correspondent

KOKRAJHAR: Struggling for over six years in collecting data, references and historical evidences, The Bodo-Fight for Identity, a documentary film produced under Balgovind Grandsons Productions, Mumbai by Anamika Basumatary of Guwahati and Nishant Balgovind of Mumbai, is all set to hit the screens soon.

Talking to media persons at Kokrajhar Press Club on Thursday, scriptwriter and director Anamika Basumatary said the documentary film was made based on 6.5 years of extensive research done from hundreds of books, documents, records, archives, libraries, newspapers and interviews of living witnesses.

The film depicted the unending struggle and fight of an indigenous tribe called ‘Boro’. She said that the film depicted the negligence shown towards the Boro tribe by various governments and the struggles of the Boro tribe from the pre-historic to the present political scenario in India.

“In 1847, a British resident named BH Hodgson, a pioneer naturalist and ethnologist while working in India, in his book ‘Kocch, Bodo and Dimal Tribes’, used the word ‘Bodo’ for the first time in place of ‘Boro’to identify this tribe. Boros have a distinct identity with unique language, tradition, culture, custom, religion, food habits and dressing sense of their own,” she said, adding that the Boro community was living in peace, untouched from the outside world until the influence of different religions, traditions, language, and culture.

Basumatary mentioned that the influx of a large number of people of different races with different religions, traditions, culture and languages in the Boro dominated areas brought severe threat to their land, existence and unique identity. However, the tribe has realized that if they do not develop themselves culturally, traditionally, economically and educationally, the day will not be far when the entire Boro community will become extinct, she said.

Anamika Basumatary is a diploma holder in Television and Film Productions from Asian Academy, Noida in New Delhi. She worked as a journalist and an assistant director in different documentary films before she turned into an independent documentary filmmaker. She is also a very good singer, lyricist and composer.

The ‘The Bodo-Fight for Identity’ is her debut documentary film while producer and co-director Nishant Balgovind worked as a freelance assistant director in Mumbai. He worked in various movies and corporate videos as an assistant director before he devoted himself to making documentary films for the cause of the poor, deprived and neglected.

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