Longtharai (film)

Longtarai is a 1986 first Kokborok feature film directed by Dipak Bhattacharya, adapted from Tripura’s former Health and Urban Development Minister Bimal Sinha’s novel "Longtarai".^[1][2]

Set against the lush hill-forests of Tripura in Northeast India, Longtarai tells the story of the Reang tribal community living in the shadow of the Longtarai mountain range, which they revere as their deity.

In the village of Shikaribari, Jarkamuni and his father Ramkarai practice jhum, the traditional shifting cultivation that sustains their community. During a collective farming session, Jarkamuni meets Sajerung, a young woman visiting from the neighboring village of Khamupara. Their connection blossoms into love, and despite the challenges of tribal customs and social expectations, they marry and start a family.

However, their happiness is overshadowed by mounting hardships. A severe drought devastates the region, leaving the Reang people unable to sustain themselves. Exploitative moneylenders trap them in endless debt, while government forest restrictions prevent them from accessing traditional resources. When Jarkamuni attempts to resist, his father holds him back, fearing worse consequences.

Realizing that their beloved land can no longer provide even basic sustenance, Jarkamuni and Sajerung make a painful decision: they must leave their ancestral home and seek work as laborers in a brick kiln for a meager wage of Rs. 10 per day. Each brick they make becomes a symbol of their struggle, not just for survival, but for the hope of a better future for the next generation.

Longtarai blends documentary-style realism with dramatic narrative, focusing on the slow erosion of tribal life and the specific socio-economic pressures forcing indigenous communities into displacement and exploitation.

Longtarai is adapted from the novel Longtarai by Bimal Sinha, a Tripura-based writer and political figure.The novel, which precedes the 1986 film release, provides the foundational narrative exploring themes of romance among the Jhumia community in Tripura's hilly terrains, reflecting indigenous lifestyles and cultural motifs central to the story. This literary source marked an early effort to bring Kokborok-language storytelling to cinema, leveraging Sinha's work to authenticate regional dialects and settings in the adaptation process. The direct transposition from print to screen preserved key elements of the novel's depiction of peripheral visions and native experiences, influencing the film's status as Tripura's inaugural Kokborok feature.^[3]

The 75-minute film's screenplay was created by Bhattacharya, who also directed it amid the intense political unrest that would engulf Tripura's hinterlands in the late 1980s. In the 1980s, shooting in celluloid with sync sound and color was a significant advance for aspiring filmmakers in Tripura. Due to funding constraints and the laborious celluloid production process, few prints of Longtharai were made. Two are held by the Government of Tripura, and the Tripura Tribal Area Autonomous District Council.^[1][4]

Longtarai, the inaugural Kokborok-language feature film, underwent principal photography in late 80s under the production banner of North Eastern Films. Directed by Dipak Bhattacharya, the shoot captured the story's depiction of Jhumia romance amid Tripura's rugged terrains, with scenes filmed in the scenic Longtharai hills to authentically represent the indigenous setting. As an early venture in Tripura's nascent film industry, the production navigated constraints common to regional cinema at the time, including scarce funding and limited infrastructural support, which impacted logistical aspects of on-location filming in remote hill areas. Despite these obstacles, the effort succeeded in pioneering feature-length storytelling in Kokborok, relying on local elements for authenticity without detailed records of specific shooting schedules or crew size publicly available^[5]

• Jitendra Riyang as Jarkamuni
• Promila Riyang as Sajerung
• Jatindra Riyang as Jatindra
• Durga Singh Riyang as Village Headman
• Phaiphirung Riyang as Jarkamuni's mother

• Kokborok Cinema
• List of Kokborok-language films

• Barma, Aloy Deb. Reading Contemporary Kokborok and Bengali Films and Videos in Tripura: History, Technology and Infrastructure. 2022. Jadavpur U.
• Debroy, Prajapita. Is Tripuriness Endangered? Read ing the Diffused Substance of Tripuri Indigeneity and Hybridity in Contemporary Kokborok Films against Bollywood in a Post-Globalization Era. 2023. Tripura U.