NESFAS is happy to share that Chentei Khiamniungan, who was an intern at The Indigenous Partnership’s Participatory Video workshop hosted by the organization, won the technical excellence award in the Jai Chandiram Memoraial 2nd National Community Media Film Festival 2019 in Telangana. The title of his film is, ‘STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY, STESS TOLERANT CROPS OF NAGALAND’. It also won the 1st prize at National short film competition organized by Samvaad in Jharkhand.
The same film also won Award with certificate and Trophy as Special Mention in the 2nd Nagaland film festival 2019.
Khiamniungan is a documentary filmmaker and a freelancer from Khiamniungan community, Langnok village (Tuensang district, in Nagaland).
He has documented more than 20+ films, supported by different departments and NGO’s in Nagaland. His films have received several accolades in the national level and have been screened both at National and International film festivals like Nagaland, Tezpur Assam, Odissa, Hyderabad, Meghalaya to Germany, Malaysia and England.
“Every filmmaker has a different way of telling a story. For me, this art of filming has shaped me a lot and not just in making films but I now look at many things differently,” he said. “I should say I am blessed and from now on I would want to tell more hidden stories through the indigenous communities where there are no written records but only people living with oral tradition,” he added.
He was also part of the participatory video team of North East Slow Food Agrobiodiversity Society Shillong (NESFAS) from 2014 to 2015, where he worked with indigenous communities in Nagaland to revive cultures, customs, values and practices of the traditional knowledge through video documentation.
The videos are produced in an extensively participatory manner, where community members have substantial influence on the nature and theme of the contents. Participatory Video is an important documentation tool, in which NESFAS in collaboration with the Indigenous Partnership and InsightShare, a community development organisation with 15 years experience combining media technology, with participatory approaches and community engagement for locally led change, encourages and trains the community members to document their own traditional knowledge and different issues relating to agriculture.
On the other hand, Samvaad is platform for exchanging ideas and thoughts on tribalism in India. Over these years, tribal communities from across the country and overseas have converged on this platform and have taken the lead in initiating the scores of issues that govern them. Emerging out of a pan-India tribal conclave, Samvaad turned international in 2017.
Samvaad intends to recognize the best of tribal films by students and development practitioners.
Watch film by Chentei below:
This is great news. The Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (TIP) had engaged Insightshare group from Oxford, UK to train several indigenous youth in Participatory Video approaches and techniques. This was possible to be done because of a Christensen Fund to TIP. Chentei was part of this Programme. Several indigenous groups of North East India produced participatory videos under this support from TIP. These can be seen under You Tube – Indigenous Community Video Collective – North East India.
Congratulations Chentei and NESFAS and NEN and even TIP will need your support. Currently Rani Khanna of London is in Meghalaya working of a documentary with NESFAS. We will one day need to once again organise a Film Festival of such documentaries.