| TITLE OF THE FILM | Brief Life Of Insects |
| DIRECTED BY | Tarun Bhartiya |
| LANGUAGE | Ktien Nongtung, Khasi (English subtitles) |
| YEAR | 2016 |
| COUNTRY | India |
| DURATION | 22 minutes |
| SPECIAL NOTE | In Memory of Tarun Bhartiya |
PRINCIPAL CREW & CAST
| RESEARCH | K Mark Swer |
| CINEMATOGRAPHY | Arwat Challam, Raihun, Tarun Bhartiya |
| EDITING | Tarun Bhartiya |
| SOUND | K Mark Swer, Rangdap Kharshiing |
| PRINCIPAL CAST | Hos Shadap, Albinus Kharkongor & Friends |
ABOUT THE FILM
What makes folk music? Is it something frozen and event friendly? Is it still made in the fields to the bump and grind of physical labour? We are in Umpohwin, a Bhoi village on the Assam-Meghalaya Border in India. Here, Bah Hos Shadap & his friends are threshing their paddy. Threshing in the Khasi-Jaintia hills involves free and voluntary exchange of labour and today Hos Shadap’s paddy field is the recipient of that voluntary exchange. As the paddy is pounded, a rhythm emerges inviting a song. Albinus Kharkongor, Umpohwin’s master of rhyme and verse, steps in and takes over. The simple rhythm belies the vast topical territory that Albinus sings. The village’s existing corpus of lyrical anecdotes gets taken over by his irreverent wit and improvisation. Longings are cloaked, oppressors are made fun of, dinner is slipped through clumsy fingers and edible roots makes one fart. The language swings from the local dialect to pidgin to one that is plainly imagined. Hos Shadap and Albinus Kharkongor filter a kind of history through their songs that will remain marginal to the canon of Khasi tribal culture.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Tarun Bhartiya was a Shillong based documentary filmmaker, political activist and poet. His films include a documentary series ‘Songs to Live By’ and ‘The Last Train in Nepal’. As an editor he worked on notable films with Vasudha Joshi (‘Girl Song’, ‘Songlines’, and ‘Cancer Katha’), Sanjay Kak (‘Jashn-e-Azadi’; also co-writer for ‘Red Ant Dream’), and Ranjan Palit (‘In Camera’). His poems and their translations appeared in various anthologies including ‘Dancing Earth: Contemporary poetry from North East India’, ‘Das Baras – Hindi Kavita Ayodhya ke Baad’. He was a member of Thma U Rangli Juki (TUR), a progressive group in Meghalaya that works with hawkers and vendors unions and in solidarity with anti-mining and anti-land grab movements. He was also a founder member of the Raiot webzine.
