Aribam Syam Sharma is a renowned and trailblazing filmmaker and composer from Manipur, who has been creating films since the 1970s. His body of works is vast and seminal, hence we felt the urgent need to digitise his films and store them properly in their digital form. The archiving of his films as one of the first steps in our archiving journey would mean starting it on the most hopeful and success-promising note.
The retrieval of his films was facilitated by the members of the Aribam Syam Sharma’s archive, James Khangengbam and Gurumayum Ashutosh. By the spring of 2021, the entire collection of films made by Aribam Syam Sharma was handed to The Northeast India AV Archive to be digitised, catalogued and stored digitally. Working with his films and archiving them were exciting affairs that inspired us to digitise more seminal works by leading filmmakers in the region. During our trip to collect his films, Mr Akira Tochigi, a film archivist from the National Films Archive Japan, conducted a workshop on how to inspect, clean and work with old celluloid films.
The next film that The Northeast India AV Archive undertook to digitise was Hamlet Bareh’s film Ka Synjuk Ri ki Laiphew Syiem. This film is the first Khasi film to have ever been made by a Khasi filmmaker. It is a historical film depicting the formation of an alliance among the Khasi and Jaintia chiefs to retaliate against the East India Company. The film was retrieved from the home of bah Ribor Kharshiing, the son of Hamlet Bareh. The Northeast India AV Archive continues to digitise various films made in the region and we are enthusiastic that Hamlet Bareh’s film and Aribam Syam Sharma’s films were among the first that put our endeavour into motion.
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