The theft of birds may not be dramatic enough to sustain a movie, but if the backdrop is a village nestled in the forests of the Eastern Himalayas, the subject could well inspire a Western, as shown by Sounak Kar, the director of Peta Dochcho.
What sets Peta Dochcho [Bird Thief] apart is not just the subject but also the fact that it is one of the first feature films in the Galo language, one of the several spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, and the first in that language to be screened outside of the State. The film is set for a world premiere on Thursday at the ongoing first edition of the World First Festival being held in Kolkata.
The film begins with a man stealing birds from their traps. He gifts the birds to his meat-loving wife, who cooks them at home. When the bird-trappers find the traps empty, they accuse each other of the theft. A fight breaks out and as matters escalate, chaos descends on the peaceful mountain village.
“What starts as an ethnographic film, moulds into a classical western vengeance drama,” says Mr. Kar, who studied direction and screenplay writing at the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI) in Kolkata and who currently teaches at the institute.
“While I was working at the Film and Television Institute of Itanagar, one of my students, Tumkar Sora, offered me a trip to his hometown, a place called Basar, located in the interiors of Arunachal Pradesh. Basar is inhabited by the Galo tribe,” Mr. Kar said.
“Their culture, lifestyle, food habits and architecture are so drastically different from that of the rest of India that I immediately suggested to Tumkar about making a local Galo film with whatever resources we have at hand. Peta Dochcho, modelled on the Western genre — you can call it an Arunachali Western or a Bamboo Shoot Western — is the timeless tale of people’s lack of emotion and sociopathy with underlying dark humour,” he said.
Made with a meagre budget of ₹8 lakh, Peta Dochcho, which is 78 minutes long, has already been screened across Arunachal Pradesh where, depending on the location, people paid from ₹50 to ₹300 to watch the film.
“We have been watching movies on TV since our childhood but they were either Bollywood or Hollywood. Although some short films have been made in the Galo language before, they have only been exhibited locally or uploaded on YouTube. Because of our very small population, a little over a lakh, and the difficult topography we live in, our tribe has always been isolated from the mainland and naturally from the rest of the world. We hope Peta Dochcho overcomes barriers and becomes the first Galo movie to be shown all around the globe across platforms,” said Tumkar Sora, who co-produced the film along with Mr. Kar.
