About This Film
Cinema in India's geopolitically and culturally distinct region, the ‘North East' finds its origins in the 1935 Assamese film – “Joymoti” directed by Jyoti Prasad Agarwala. In the decades hence, North East India – joined to the Indian mainland by a thin corridor of 22 kms, has seen the emergence of varied films imbued with a certain sense of realism, tracing back to the aforementioned work, with a depiction of the bleak and the everyday in a jarring contrast to the movies churned out by Bollywood. Filmmaker Jahnu Barua, best known for “Halodhia Choraye Baodhan Khai” or “The Catastrophe” (1987) – winner of the Silver Leopard at the Locarno Festival in 1988, establishes a distinct voice committed to realism, with his debut feature – “Aparoopa” (1982) which refers to the titular character – a lonely wife whose life within vacuous privilege, familial trauma, and unfulfilled desires of the past, plays out alongside an array of characters. For his debut title, Barua received the National Award for Best Feature Film in Assamese in 1983.
Synopsis
Barua sets his story in erstwhile British colonial era tea gardens in the tea-producing North East Indian state of Assam, juxtaposing it with the lives of rural folk surrounding the tea gardens. The narrative begins with a young captain in the army returning home to his ailing mother in the village. While consulting with the village doctor, he meets the owner of one of the tea estates who strikes up a friendship with him, impressed with his position in the Army. The affluent tea planter or Barua saheb later learns that his wife, Aparoopa, is a childhood friend of the young captain Rana.
