Mau: The Spirit Dreams of Cheraw

Shilpika Bordoloi / Documentary / India / Mizo / 08:21 / 2023

7th March 2024 | 3.15 pm | CD Deshmukh Auditorium | Filmmaker in attendance

Mau: The Spirit Dreams of Cheraw is a performance documentary film from Mizoram, through Cheraw (Bamboo dance) and ritual folklore, revealing the forgotten memory of the story of the mother who dies at childbirth. The film shows a re-imagined dance of the mother spirit. Bamboo Dance was performed as a way to pacify the soul of the mother who died in childbirth. Bamboo is part of the geo-political history of Mizoram and the many other states in the North-east of India. Hence the loss of this intergenerational maternal memory is the crisis of culture, the climate of a place. This film is part of a few chapters of Eulogies to Mother Earth that looks at few human and non-human relationships by inquiring the hidden stories, indigenous knowledge systems, memories, ancestral wisdom and displacement of this relationship.

Directors’ bio:

Shilpika Bordoloi is a filmmaker, performer, educator and curator. She is the founder and works as the Artistic Director of Brahmaputra Cultural Foundation (BCF), a space of—and for—community participation, leadership, artistic journeys/performances, exchanges and education through arts and culture. She is a visiting faculty to the National School of Drama and National Institute of Design and at State University of Film and Television, Haryana.