‘The House of Baruas’ or ‘Baruar Xongxar’ in Assamese, a documentary directed by national award-winning filmmaker Utpal Borpujari has been selected to be screened at the Indian Panorama of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa.
Altogether 25 feature films and 20 non-feature films will be showcased at the 54th IFFI to be held from November 20 to 28.
The 71.44-minute documentary is about a 100-year-old house in Guwahati, Assam.
On the eastern side of Guwahati’s historic Latasil playground stands an iconic Assam-type house that completed a century of existence in 2023. Constructed by engineer Chandranath Barua, this house has been home to some of Assam’s most famous icons, such as filmmaker-actor-musician Brajen Barua, filmmaker-footballer-flautist-painter Nip Barua, singer-turned-composer Ramen Barua, filmmaker Dibon Barua, cricketer-turned-singer Dwipen Barua, cricketer-pilot-entrepeneur-politician Girin Barua and radio broadcaster Niren Barua. The Baruas are surely the only family in Assam, and perhaps in the entire India, that has produced so many noted personalities in fields as diverse as cinema, music, sports and politics.
This is the story of ‘The House of Baruas’, reconstructed through memories, archival film clips and photographs and lots of love. Now the house is in need of repairs and faces an uncertain future.
The film is produced by Nayan Prasad, Jemini Phukan and Dibyajyoti Saharia.
“As a filmmaker with a journalistic past, I have always felt strongly about the lack of archiving local histories in India as a matter of national interest. All such archiving happens – when it happens – at mostly individual levels. Often, we don’t know the history of the locality or the town or the city we live in,” said director Utpal Borpujari.
Borpujari was fascinated by a Facebook page started by a conservation architect in Assam to document what are known as ‘Assam Type’ houses, found typically in Assam and the rest of Northeastern India as well as in the Sylhet area of Bangladesh.
“The idea was to involve the community by requesting them to share photos of their ancestral houses made in ‘Assam Type’ style. That sparked in me the idea to document the House of Baruas in Guwahati. And what better way than to do it via a film, given that the family’s contribution to Assamese cinema has been immense. As the house completed 100 years this year, this is a tribute to that family – and that house – whose history is not widely known among the current generations,” added Borpujari who has been a journalist, a film critic and a filmmaker.
He is known for his award-winning fiction feature ‘Ishu’, short fiction ‘Xogun’ and documentaries ‘Mask Art of Majuli’, ‘Memories of a Forgotten War’ and ‘Songs of the Blue Hills’, among others. A number of his films have travelled to prestigious film festivals and have won awards and nominations at international, and national film festivals. Borpujari has also served in international and national film juries and has been a film festival organizer and curator. He is a former member of FIPRESCI and a current member of NETPAC.
Other Northeast films:
Several other films from the Northeast have been selected to be screened in the feature and non-feature sections of the Indian Panorama, the flagship component of the IFFI.
In the feature section, only one film from the Northeast has been selected. It’s ‘Mirbeen’, a Karbi language film directed by Mridul Gupta.
The non-feature films from the Northeast are – ‘Andro Dreams’ (Manipuri) by Meena Longjam, ‘Baruar Xongxar’ (Assamese) by Utpal Borpujari, ‘Kathabor’ (Assamese) by Keshar Jyoti Das, ‘Lachit’ (The Warrior) (Assamese) by Parthasarathi Mahanta, ‘Last Meet’ (Manipuri) by Waribam Dorendra Singh and ‘Mau: The Spirit Dreams Of Cheraw’ (Mizo) by Shilpika Bordoloi.
