ITANAGAR, Feb 18 – Tribal communities in India have their own distinctive cultures, but they are in danger of being undermined by the onslaught of modern culture and now an award-winning documentary film-maker endeavours to preserve in celluloid whatever is left of them.
Son of a former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister, 36-year-old Moji Riba has undertaken a dream project, perhaps for the first time, to create a cinematic time capsule documenting simultaneously one full year in the life of 15 of the numerous tribes in Arunachal Pradesh.
Talking about the project named imaginatively ‘Mountain Eye’, Moji says the eastern-most border State has the greatest concentration of cultural diversity in the country with over 25 major tribes inhabiting the 84,000 sq km hilly land.
“But this extraordinary cultural tapestry risks being blown away by the storm of outside influence. The situation has turned so grave that most Arunachalee students now seldom speak their own mother tongues in their homes.’’
As their traditions and cultures are not written down in scripts and handed down to generations orally, they are disappearing fast.
Riba said he had contributed Rs 23 lakh from his Rolex Award to the project which is estimated to cost between Rs 60 and Rs 70 lakh. – PTI
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