Ishanou
Manipuri cinema, from the state of Manipur in northwest India, only got going in 1972 and it’s pretty fair to say that Ishanou (The Chosen One) is either the most famous film ever to come from there or a contender for the title. Made in 1990 by Aribam Syam Sharma it’s a beautiful and deceptively simple drama shot on 16mm stock, which makes the whole thing gauzy and impressionistic and offsets an ethnographic element as fascinating as the story it tells. A preamble gives us a structure for what’s to follow and fills us in on the background on the Maibis of Manipur, a religious order of sorts, whose female members are said … Read more