Tribals to make animation films based on folklore

New Delhi: Armed with multimedia softwares, tribals from Jharkhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and the North-East are being assisted by six students of Ahmadabad-based National Institute of Design in the capital to synchronise their tribal folklore into animation films. For over two dozen tribals, many of them from some of the remote parts of the country, the rustic tools of daily life have been replaced by a keyboard and a mouse as they make their way into the world of animation.

Armed with multimedia softwares like Photoshop, Premier, Maya, Macromedia 3D Max and Combustion SFX (for special effects), tribals hailing from Jharkhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and the North-East are being assisted by six students of Ahmadabad-based National Institute of Design in the capital to synchronise their tribal folklore into animation films.

The participants are not only writing their scripts, storyboard and designing picture frames for their respective 5-minute films but will also render rural tunes as background music in them.

"We are doing the storytelling and film editing part. How and where to place the characters in the film sequence is being helped by the NID students," says Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, a Gonda tribal artist from MP, as he draws various designs of the Squirrel for their film "Gilahri ka Sapna".

The Santhal tribals group from Jharkhand and West Bengal are putting together a folk tale with the main characters of a Bear, Tiger and a man.

"Our designs are drawm from wall paintings found in our villages. The music that the film will have will be unique to our culture," says Bharat Bhushan Murmu, a santhal from Jharkhand. "The whole of India is discovering animation, hence this is the right time for these tribal artists to reap the benefits of the technology and explore native Indian animation," Tara Douglas, workshop conductor and an animator herself, says.

Douglas said these artists need financial help and encouragement. She is also contemplating to approach the Ministry of Culture and Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) for monetary assistance as animation is a "costly business which these artists cannot afford".

As the tribals prepare beautiful picture of wild animals, birds, trees and other flora, the NID students pitch in for "depth and perspective" of the subject.

"We are not here to change their lifestyle and their traditional stories... that is their take," Gaurav Juyal, a final year student of Animation and Film Design at NID, says.

The two-week workshop is being organised by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Douglas, who works with the Adivasi Art Trust in the capital.

The group from Manipur is preparing a story based on a man and a monkey. One participant - Oken Amakchan - says that the workshop will take their skills "forward by leaps".

The three films will have sound effects by the tribal artists themselves and the participants have been instructed to "forget themselves and be the animated characters".

source: The Deccan Herald

Orissa tribals vow to ban child marriage

In a nutshell, child marriage is a social disaster. It is one of the prime causes of population explosion in our country. The prevalence of child marriage is rampant in rural and tribal areas.

Koraput being one of the most predominant tribal districts in India, has had dubious distinction of registering maximum number of child marriages.

According to a recent private data, over 90 per cent of girls were married before reaching the legal age of 18 years and almost all of them soon became pregnant in Koraput district.

In Koraput, a village called Tutiaguda, recorded 27 marriages of which 26 were of underaged girls and boys. The marriages took place between 2004 and 2006.

The tribals in Tutiaguda village took a praiseworthy step of deciding to ban child marriage in the village. Earlier, they did not know about the ill effects of child marriage but now they have decided to get their girls married only after 18.

Despite the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, 40 to 50 percent of marriages in India involve a girl under 18 or a boy under 21, the legal ages for marriage. In such a scenario, the step taken by Tutiaguda tribals is remarkable. Others should follow them.

Tribal Dances of Orissa

The Tribals who constitute about one fourth of the total population of Orissa have very many dances of secular, religious and seasonal in character. Living in the midst of nature their dances and songs are vivid, temperamental and attuned to nature herself. Nature is always the strongest inspiration for them, coupled with the customs and religious heritage.

The colourful spring time dance of the 'Santhals' with their musical instrument, 'Madal' performed by the maidens, their pastoral dance during ripening of grain, the dance of the 'Kolha' at the time of planting of the seeds in honour of their deity is performed by men and women. The dances of the Gonds done in dedication to their deity 'Bhimsen' at harvesting festival time, marriage celebrations accompanied by several musical instruments like the horned-drums, flutes and many clarions.

The spring dance of the 'Bhattara' with beautiful dresses, silver ornaments of women, flushed as they move and the colourful turbans of the men stuck with peacock feathers. The 'Sua' dance of the Sambalpur tribes performed by the young girls in the spirit of adventure and romance accompanied by drummers and musicians.

The ring dance of the 'Oroans' performed during all festivals and in the spring and autumn seasons in a circle. The women dancers placing their arms at the back of their neighbours and clasping the hands of the next, the courtship dances of 'Ho'. The 'Jhadia Paraja' dance exhibiting graceful movement and artistic skill, the colourful dance of the 'Gadaba', the dance of the 'Koya's with the headdress of Bison horn. Women dressed in colourful attires with iron sticks in hands making a jingling sound in accompaniment of musical instruments.

The dance of the 'Kutal Kandha' with the single stringed 'Dungadunga', the peacock, sparrow, vulture, deer dances of 'Juang' to the tune of their musical instrument, 'Changu' and 'Badakatha', and a wide variety of dances clearly give an idea how the culture of the tribals born out of nature and attuned to nature can live and flourish spontaneously.

These are just a few representative examples of the tribal dances of Orissa. The tribal dance itself is vast in variety indicating their importance in the social and religious life of the people.

Source: Indiainfoweb

Technology helping to bring tribal art to life

Gond tribal artist Gariba Tekam had never even seen a computer till two weeks back. Now, he’s working with technology to bring his images to life. As he paints a blue fox on a piece of paper, part of the storyboard for an animation film on a squirrel’s dream, Tekam says he is excited to help one of the many folk stories from his Patangarh village in Madhya Pradesh reach a wider audience.

The artist’s quantum leap into computer technology comes after two days of not-sointensive training, part of the two-week animation workshop conducted by the Adivasi Arts Trust, or AAT, at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, or IGNCA.

“Everyone’s talking about animation these days, then why should these tribal artists not get a chance to see their work animated?” asks animator Tara Douglas, who heads the Indian chapter of Londonbased AAT.

As part of the programme, tribal artists from three regions—Gonds from Madhya Pradesh, Santhals from Jharkhand and West Bengal, and Meiteis and Thadou Kukis from Manipur—work on animating their stories with finalyear animation students from the Ahmedabad-based Nation al Institute of Design, or NID.

The idea stemmed from a 2006 project called “The Tallest Story Competition,” which took five tribal stories with typical indigenous characters, animated and dubbed them into Gaelic (a language spoken in some parts of western Scotland) and then asked schoolchildren to vote for their favourite. The winning Gond story received an award from the Scottish government, which had sponsored the project to preserve local culture and language.

“This is the first time we’re doing something like this and it’s a very interesting experience,” says NID student Anish Daolangupu, who is helping out the Gond tribe. “We actu ally brought our process (of animation) with us and we’re taking their ideas to formulate the final thing,” says Deepak Verma, also an NID student working with the same group.

The students teach the tribals how to put stories to frames—and stress that they don’t need to be computer experts to be animators.

The team that seems to have caught on fastest is a group of six from Manipur, who have already completed the storyboard and partial voice recording of Man and Monkey, the story of how two monkeys fool a man and how he later gets even with them.

Laying their voice tracks over the painted story and working on the subtitles, Satya Hijam says, “We’re going to conduct a workshop in Imphal inviting all artists. We will try to get help from the MFDC (Manipur Film Development Corporation).” Hijam is a cartoonist with Imphal’s largest newspaper by circulation, Sangai Express.

Analysing the possibilities of animation, New Delhi-based social researcher Rekha Konsom says, “The disappointment is that people are only working with the commercial aspects. These people here take animation as an art form.

This is also a great way to relate our folk stories with the current environmental problems like global warming, since most of our tales are inspired by nature.” Voicing similar intentions are the members of the Santhal group. “We are looking at this opportunity as a means to preserve our culture, which is getting lost with modernization and migration into cities,” says Bharat Murmu, media coordinator of the All India Santhal Welfare and Cultural Society.

Kailash Kumar Mishra, the workshop coordinator from IGNCA, says, “This is an effort to engage the computer-savvy and animation-savvy generation and make them aware and understand their culture.”

Amid all this creativity, one practical problem looms: funding. “We really need funds to carry out these plans and at the moment, there are no willing sponsors as such,” says Mang Kipen, who is the only one from the Thadou Kuki tribe in Manipur. The organizers plan to do more outreach in the home states of the artists

“We need a market. I feel the government should hold some animation festival, just like they do film festivals. Now, if I tell my people back there that I am an animator, they will give a big stare,” laughs Oyimbong Imchen, who prefers being called “Abong,” from Nagaland. He is working with AAT’s Douglas to organize a similar workshop in Nagaland later this year “to make them aware of the possibilities of telling their folklore in the audio-visual medium”, says Douglas. To battle the funding issue, “we are focusing on children’s stories, because they like animation and it’s a great way to educate them about their culture”, says Douglas, who plans to take these tribal art-inspired animation films to schools, and even state-run television network Doordarshan, as part of its education segment. “I’m hoping this will be a funding source in the future,” she says.

Waiting for this nascent project to really take off, the artists say it might open some other eyes also. Says Michael Soren, amid much laughter from his fellow Santhal animators, “At the very least, this might break the Jhinga-La-La, cannibal and half-naked stereotyped notion that people have about us, while preserving our culture in a fun way.”

By Shruti Chakraborty

Tribal believers forced to convert to Hinduism in Karnataka

Two hundred tribal families numbering to 500 believers are living in Thithimati Bamboo Kadu forest area, about 10 km away from Ponnampetu Police Station, Virajpet Taluk, Kodagu district. These groups of tribals are believers for 25 years and have been attending various Independent Churches in and around Honsur, Virajpet.

On 8th July at around 12 ‘o’ clock mid night police officer Mr. Harivardhan of Ponnampetu Police station along with 9 police personnel and Hindu radicals entered the tribal colony and dragged the believers out from their sleep and ruthlessly beaten them. They charged the believers with forced conversion and abused them. Four youngsters namely Ramu (30), Raju (32), Kashi (27) and Sindhu (27) from different families were arrested. They were taken to Ponnampetu police station and charged with forceful conversion, robbery, rape etc. The believers were lodged in Virajpet jail for 3 days. Some pastors in that area later released these believers.

On 15th July, Zilla Panchayat President Mr. Ravindran and other Hindu radicals along with the police went to the tribal colony again and intimated the families and asked them to convert to Hinduism. In the evening, the Hindus along with the police officials reached the tribal colony with animal sacrifices and idols and forced the believers to worship the idols and convert to Hinduism.

Please pray for the tribal believers.

Extracted from Dr. Sajan's Blog