Scratches on Stone by Amit Mahanti
In Nagaland, stones remind you of what they have seen. The past lingers on, framed through photographs, casting shadows over the present. Zubeni grew up in the 1980s and '90s in the middle of the violence that inflicted Nagaland through the 50-year war of independence. ‘Today, it’s there – somewhere – in all her photographs’, she says. In Mon, 98-year old Cheno Khuzuthrupa remembers another time – through the image of a sculpture outside his house – while Shoupa and Zubeni talk about an Austrian ethnologist who lived in Wakching in the 1930s.
Kathmandu, Nepal (Award)
Thrissur; Pondicherry; Kolkata; Madurai; India
Amit Mahanti is a filmmaker, cameraperson and editor, who has worked on films and video installations that explore questions of ecological transformation, culture and politics. A recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship, he has been a part of art and film residency programmes at Khoj Studios, New Delhi; PAV Experimental Centre of Contemporary Art, Turin; Kran Film, Brussels; and the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski, Warsaw. Every Time You Tell a Story, on the Tsungkoteptsu shawl-making tradition in Nagaland, is his earlier film.
- Cinematographer, Editor: Amit Mahanti
- Location Sound Recordist: Julius L. Basaiawmoit
- Additional Cinematographer, Assistant: Daksh Punj
- Sound Designers: Manas S. Baruah, Amit Mahanti
- Sound Mixer: Manas S. Baruah
- Colour Correction: Ganesh Prasad
- Project Partner: Doordarshan
Festival, screening and distribution queries: distribution@psbt.org