By Nava Thakuria*
When Folk Tales Dance Again on Screen in Guwahati
Guwahati: As the final days of November 2025 approach, a gentle winter chill settles over Guwahati, carrying with it the quiet hum of anticipation among cinema lovers, critics, and filmmakers from eastern India. On 29 and 30 November, the ninth edition of the Chalachitram National Film Festival (CNFF) will open its doors at Jyoti Chitraban, unveiling nearly thirty short films that breathe life into India’s millennia-old civilisation, culture, and heritage while nurturing a deep sense of nationalism.
These films move effortlessly from the vast human journey of preserving ancestral legacies amid relentless change to the intimate struggles of the young, restless souls who retreat into isolation when shifting desires and psychological pressures grow too heavy, only to find their way back through the sudden, familiar warmth of a parent’s hand or the remembered scent of home-cooked meals shared in childhood. Slow learners tracing letters in the dust with hesitant fingers and differently-abled children whose laughter rises as clear bells over courtyards appear on screen, quietly unveiling worlds of pain, resilience, and grace that most viewers have never truly seen.
Traditional love, once the steady heartbeat of joint families, now flickers uncertainly beneath layers of suspicion and mistrust, yet it flares again in moments of crisis—when floodwaters rise, or illness descends—binding fractured households with empathy and forgiveness. Elderly professionals sit alone on city balconies, medals gathering dust, soothed only by fragments of wedding songs drifting on the evening breeze or the distant creak of village puppet stages. The slow erosion of joint-family values, the lingering weight of caste on the underprivileged, and the fierce resolve of individuals to rise above prejudice weave naturally through these stories.
From there, the screen widens to reveal matriarchal societies where, after marriage, men leave their birth families forever to join their wives’ clans, leaving ageing fathers in silent isolation on the far side of thresholds they once crossed as grooms. Ancient practices of magic still sparkle in the eyes of children who watch wandering storytellers summon impossible tigers from thin air, igniting dreams that refuse to dim beneath concrete skies. Fragile Assamese string puppets jerk and sway on slender threads under lantern-lit banyan trees, carrying centuries in every wooden bow. Looms that have sung through the night for thousands of years—spinning eri, muga, and pat silk into living history—now stand threatened by the cold precision of machines and the preference of younger generations for synthetic ease over hand-woven warmth.
Rural evenings, once alive with tales of malevolent spirits that made hearts race and hearths burn brighter, return like mist over moonlit paddy. Rough palms press against the bark of ancient sal trees, lovers’ names carved long ago still whisper in bamboo groves, and abandoned victory pillars half-swallowed by lantana wait like sleeping lions for new voices to retell their sagas. Creators who devoted their lives to capturing life, culture, and legacy leave their quiet footprints across these frames, drawing viewers into a profound recognition of what has been guarded, what has been lost, and what still burns beneath the noise of the modern world.
In a nation of over 140 crore people, film festivals bloom in every season and corner—Mumbai’s monsoon-soaked screens, Delhi’s fog-shrouded auditoriums, Kerala’s emerald backwaters, Rajasthan’s starlit deserts—each adding its own colour to India’s cinematic tapestry. With its steadfast theme “Our Heritage, Our Pride,” the CNFF, now nearing its tenth year, has quietly taken its place among distinguished platforms such as the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, Great Indian Film and Literature Festival, Asia Livelihood Documentary Festival, Alpavirama South Asian Short & Documentary Film-fest, Bangalore Queer Film-fest, Brahmaputra Valley Film-fest, Cinemela Film-fest, Flashpoint Human Rights Film-fest, Golden Jury Film-fest, Hyderabad Bengali Film-fest, Indogma Film-fest, Jagran Film-fest, Jeevika Film-fest, Kalakari Film-fest, Madhubani Film-fest, New Delhi Film-fest, National Science Film-fest, Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema, Patna Film-fest, Rajasthan Film-fest, Tigerland India Film-fest, Verite Film-fest, and Vibgyor Film-fest.
The journey began modestly in 2016 when a small group of dreamers founded Chalachitram to bring meaningful cinema into ordinary homes and classrooms. The first edition in 2017, then called Guwahati Film Festival, unfolded across Rabindra Bhawan, the Textile Institute, and Cotton University before finding its lasting name and its spiritual home at Jyoti Chitraban—the grounds consecrated to Rupkonwar Jyotiprasad Agarwalla, where the scent of earth after rain still mingles with the faint echo of old reels.
Beneath trees that have sheltered generations of storytellers, the ninth CNFF will once again welcome viewers into the half-light, inviting them to sit, watch, listen, and remember the quiet, enduring prides that continue to glow long after the credits roll.
*Senior journalist
