Indigenous filmmaker Pranami Koch’s documentary film ‘Koro Gochongni’ (Echoes Within) has been selected for the Shorts Competition Category at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Koch, who hails from Assam and belongs to the Koch tribal community, describes her film as an attempt to “locate my indigenous identity”.
The documentary deals with the narrator seeking and exploring her ancestral land to reaffirm her identity as a Koch woman. The film begins with the protagonist’s father summoning memories of his mother’s features, telling Pranami how she resembles her grandmother. “Can I be nostalgic about something I have never experienced?” Koch asks in the hope of finding a sense of belonging, an anchor to hold her. Throughout the film she tries to spend time with the women of the community in an attempt to rebuild her relationship with her lost indigenous roots.
Talking about the experience of filming the documentary, Pranami told The Satyashodhak, “The community is spread across many states in India. In the 1800s after assimilation with the majoritarian community, the tribe lost a lot of their traditional food habits, culinary practices, and went through a process of acculturation. But I went to a remote part of Meghalaya, in a village called Harisong, where the cultural elements beat language, traditions, the faith system, and the members of the community have managed to retain their culture because they live in far-off hills. I met with the people of the community and it was a very ethereal experience in the sense that I could learn my native tongue and speak a language that has been erased from my life.”See AlsoGive Me the Backstory: Get to Know 3 Indigenous Filmmakers With Shorts at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival | Sundance Film Festival
In the film, the narrator tries to historically connect her indigenous roots through the memories of her grandmother. Reflecting on the theme of the documentary, Pranami stated, “I have always been negotiating my identity as in who I am, who I am in these diverse multicultural, multi-religious identities that we are part of in India, so I’m just trying to position my identity as a tribal woman. Because I’m a North East Indian from the mainland perspective, then I have Assamese as my regional identity, I am also a Hindu, that’s my religious identity but all of these identities that I have been crediting myself all my life, who I am as an indigenous Koch woman, my tribal identity just got lost and suppressed in the process. I have been born and brought up in a patriarchal, Brahmanical society which has a lot of caste hierarchy and a lot of discrimination that comes along with it. So having experienced these things throughout my life in subtle and sometimes explicit ways I wanted to search for who I am. Basically I often think about how from a very small age when we menstruate and as a Hindu there is a lot of politics to menstruation in the sense of purity and pollution. In Hindu traditional households, menstruating women would not be allowed in sacred places and certain places in the house, and all of these experiences as a child were very disturbing for me. When I discovered that I am part of this community which is matrilineal and does not follow these rules, I felt angst in me that I was raised within this realm where these restricted ideas confine our bodies. So the angst actually made this film as an outlet to discover what I was going through.”
The film follows through the life of women belonging to the Koch tribe. On working with the people of the village, Pranami shared, “The film is shot in three different villages, Harisong, Borkonasong, and Kumlisong, so all the women are primarily from these villages. They were very participative and always encouraged me to take part in the activities that they were doing. They would ask me to come along with them for fishing, they would help me with how to wear the traditional wear. Gradually, they understood what I was doing so they would also provide some inputs and suggestions like we should dance and do this or that. It was a very cathartic experience working with them.”
The film comes to a watershed moment when the people of the tribe embrace a new religion. This decision brings about a departure from the old lifestyle of the Koch community. The erstwhile matrilineal society lets go of their language, traditional wear named lifaan and other customs and traditions and welcome new ones. While reflecting on this, Koch said, “When a tribal community accepts mainstream religion they face restrictions. So a lot of people have left a lot of traditions. But now they are trying to rejuvenate and understand what they have lost in the process of becoming what we are not and why we became what we weren’t. Many people broke the vessel in which they made their chokot, which is used in important traditional rituals like birth, funeral and marriage, affecting the most significant and primary events. So all of these restrictions were put in place when mainstream religion was accepted by the community and the tribal and indigenous way of life was lost in the process. The core of the film is the loss of language. It is very heartbreaking to one day stop speaking your language and why would they do so and what sort of extreme eternal force must be there which they were not able to resist?”
Talking about the process of filmmaking and the production process, Koch shared, “It was a very hectic process. I chose to go to Meghalaya because the speakers of native tongue and remnants of the community are still present there. Initially I made something very short and part of it was made for the Gender Bender (Sandbox Collective) grant that I got in 2022. I jumped into that project alone, I did research, shoot, sound, and everything on my own. I came back to Bangalore and made edits on the film and that edit was shown in the Bangalore International Centre. But I got a very curious gaze from the audience. People were not recognising that such kinds of identities and realities also exist in India so I wanted to continue with this project. I went to the village to spend more time and spoke to many other people, listened to their conversations and whatever they had to say and then I kept editing the film. Our crew was quite small, it was just me and my cinematographer, so our responsibilities were overlapping and we had to play multiple roles. We came back but this time I wanted more help and more minds with the sound and music. So I collaborated with my dear friends, Eemon Koch and Rishikesh Thangjam, they put in their skill with the sound and music and the cinematographer did the colour and I did editing and direction. The production part of it was very overlapping but we kept a very clean edit. ”
Speaking about her filmmaking journey Ms Koch shared, “I was always pulled towards looking at modern images, and the politics surrounding it and what it does in a world that is already bombarded with a lot of images. During the Covid pandemic I was stuck in Gujarat and during that time all of us were anxious and scared about our future and I was missing my home. Then I made a short film as a part of my coursework at the National Institute of Design, which was around three minutes long and it was greatly appreciated in my department and I was encouraged to explore this medium. And since I have this background that has not been just films but of visual media and also of audio media, I realised making films feels more fulfilling because here I can explore the power of sound and visuals and not be restricted by any form. Maybe I’ll not stop here but move towards other things.”
Ms Koch told The Satyashodhak that she is working on a new documentary titled “What would it mean to see a Cobra in a dream”.
Tags
filmmaking Indigeneity North East India