Adaptation

The Story of Man, Tiger and Spirit is unfolding scene by scene in the virtual world.  The short animation film, that will be part of the “Tales of the Tribes” collection, is based on an Angami folktale of three brothers, Man, Tiger and Spirit; it tells how they once lived together, and how they separated.

Storytelling was an oral tradition and folktales are embellished by the storyteller  who remembers certain details and elaborates on others.  This short film is an adaptation.  As Deborah Cartmell writes, “every cultural artifact is an adaptation”[1].

To make this film, the story has to be adapted for the audio visual medium to include movement and sound.  Films are a complex arrangements of shots that have been chosen and edited together to convey the story in a clear, interesting way, and as animation is  labour intensive, a lot of pre-production planning is done.  “Fidelity is tiresome as a critical strategy not least because it is an inexact science…”[2] writes Deborah Cartmell. 

Some folktales are oral epics with many characters and relationships.  “Adaptation is a process of identifying the story and focusing the story line…but this is no easy matter, since the story line is often hidden among character details, thematic statements, information and descriptions”[3]  writes Linda Seger.  Details and nuances may not translate across cultures and it is the animation script writer and director ‘s responsibility  to have sensitivity and a thorough background in research to decide how to adapt the story for the film;  with the theme of tribal folktales it is important to work in collaboration with members of the local community and avoid misrepresentation.   Experience shows that a group workshop is a good way of starting the adaptation process, providing  a “think tank” to  discuss the film at the script stage  where ideas are bounced about by the group and consensus is reached.   It is also recommended to circulate the drafted script amongst selected cultured people from the community, writers, storytellers and film makers.  

The perceived audience for the film has the largest influence on it.   Adaptation is “… repurposing for a new audience in a different time or cultural context”[4], writes Deborah Cartmell.  Understanding and interpretation of the story changes with both time and  exposure but as most tribal folktales have some common lesson of wisdom, the message that the story intended for the listener needs to be identified and communicated in the animation film.    Additional meanings and nuances will be read in the details and juxtapositions of the film, and while some are intended others become apparent.  The main story line demands to be received by everyone that watches the film but subtle details will only resonate with individuals.  “Film can give us the story information, character information, ideas and images and style all in the same moment”[5], writes  Linda Seger.  Through multiple layers the film gains an enhanced feeling of authenticity and members of the community recognize cultural details and their intrinsic meanings.

Filmic conventions include postmodern intertextuality.  Based on one central story of a competition between Man Tiger and Spirit, adaptation for the film script attaches references to several other tales from the Naga Hills.   Two prominent symbols of Nagaland are the Hornbill bird and the wild bison (Mithun);  I wanted to include both in the film.  That myth that man first emerged either from a hole in the ground or a cave is shared by several Naga tribes, and there is another folktale that tells of a deal made by the Mithun with the first Man,  so that he would be able to roam freely.  
The main story, about the three brothers, is clear about how Man and Tiger became separated, but Spirit’s alienation needed to be understood,.  In the animation film Man’s arrogant self importance on winning the race (through devious means), was repulsive to Spirit who felt that he could no longer relate to his human brother; This leads on to the eerie climax of the film, when  Spirit swaps Man’s eyes with  Dog – and  he has not been able to see Spirit since;  This detail  and a scene of head-hunting ants that motivates  Man to achieve his identity as a warrior,  have been incorporated from other Naga tales. 

A detail that was omitted from the story in the film was when Mother was  buried under the hearth after her demise, as I felt that this would not be understood by youth today.  On the subject of unintended meanings – I wondered if anyone would associate pregnancy caused by a passing cloud with the virgin birth of Christian ideology. 

Naga  woven shawls have been used to create the environment for the story.   Mapping photographs of hand woven shawls  from various tribes onto 3D computer generated geometry is an experiment that gives an  unusual and undeniable “Naga” look to the film.  That it is an Angami tale is reflected in the selection of textiles used in the home environment of the characters (around and inside the cave);   Textiles of other tribes are used to suggest the tribal diversity of the Naga Hills.  Jewelry, accessories and props in the film are mostly faithful to the Angami tribe, with exception of the spectacular Konyak beaded belt worn by the “Mother”  character and the head pendant acquired by Man at the end of the film;  though from the Konyak tribe, it is the most recognizable symbol of the headhunter warrior. 

The Narrator of the story is now the Hornbill bird.  This seemed to be suitable as the exotic hornbill is the kind of bird that one might expect to talk.   Now that the first rough cut of the short film almost done,  I will be going to Kohima next week to liaise with musicians.  The musical soundtrack of the film will be a fusion mix.  A catchy tune with a distinctively Naga flavour is required, while avoiding the musical influences of the church yet giving space for contribution by young Nagas.

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[1] Deborah Cartmell,”Screen Adaptation, Impure Cinema”, Chapter3, Literature on Film: Writers on Adaptations in the Early Twentieth Century, p55

[2] Deborah Cartmell,”Screen Adaptation, Impure Cinema”, Chapter 1, Adaptation: Theories, Interpretations and New Dilemmas, p20

[3]  Linda Seger, “The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film”, Chapter 5, Finding the Story, p 77

[4] Deborah Cartmell,”Screen Adaptation, Impure Cinema”, Chapter 1, Adaptation: Theories, Interpretations and New Dilemmas, p21

[5] Linda Seger, “The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film”, Chapter1, Why Literature Resists Film”, p 16

Launch of “Fading Ink – The Dying Art of Naga Tattoos”, a documentary film

The premiere screening of a documentary film, “Fading Ink – The Dying Art of Naga Tattoos”, was held at the North East Zone Cultural Centre on Friday 5^th August 2011.  The 60 minute film was made by the team at Design Stash: Akanito Assumi, Lipok Yanger and  Inotu Nawang Khulu, and it was commissioned by the North East Zone Cultural Centre.  The film is an pleasing and entertaining production “not as a scholar, but as a seeker of truth”.  Aptly described as a “travelogue” on the cover of the DVD, the young Naga film-makers toured Nagaland visiting the tribes that had a tradition of tattooing (Ao, Chang, Konyak, Khemungan, Yimchungrü and Pochury) to find out more about the reasons for tattooing and the cause of its demise.  In the Ao tribe it was only women that were tattooed, showing commitment to her husband and family, and there were also associations with the notorious headhunting past when murdered women would be recognized by their clans by their tattoos.   

In the Konyak tribe tattoos proclaimed the exalted status of headhunting warriors.  I felt that the most interesting sound bites in the film were the charming, amusing reflections from a few of the remaining old opium fuelled warriors of bygone days.  “How is it better when we live like sissies?  Show them to me!  Instead of being fierce like this we have become meek, useless cowards”, declares one elderly warrior, adding that, "now all we do is say Hallelujah and tell lies….”  

Conversion to Christianity spelt the end of many animist traditions, including headhunting and tattooing.  Nowadays the youth are not getting tattooed for the same reasons as their forefathers, though some are turning to it as a fashion.  Well researched and backed up with quotes from renowned anthropologists  and a good standard of production,  the film has obvious appeal for young people and I suggest that it be submitted for screening on national TV encouraging the young film-makers and  fostering general understanding of Naga traditions amongst the urban mainstream audience.

The screening was attended by the Commissioner of Art and Culture, Mr. Himato Zhimomi and it was introduced by the Director of NEZCC, Mr Som Kamei.  It is encouraging that young Nagas are taking such initiatives to explore their roots and that they are receiving support in this from NEZCC.  It could also be the first of a series of such films on Naga culture, through the eyes of the modern generation.   

Press Release: 4 August 2011

Students of Christian Mission Secondary School in Dimapur were invited to the North East Zone Cultural Centre for an animation film screening programme and presentation by visiting British animator Tara Douglas.  Tara is currently working at the Centre to complete a short animated folktale from Nagaland.  She is also Secretary of the Adivasi Arts Trust, an NGO based in London that collaborates with indigenous artists in India for digital media projects.  This animation project received a grant for its completion from the State Government of Nagaland (Department of Art and Culture), with a request that young Nagas become involved in the project to gain exposure to new ways of preserving their culture.   Tara felt that the 3D software used to animate characters based on traditional wooden sculptures would be too complicated for beginners to learn, but as she was determined to turn the youth on to animation in Nagaland, she felt that screening events would raise awareness of the potential of animation as new tool for artists and storytellers.

  

Films screened at the event today included “The Tallest Story Competition” collection of animated folktales in various indigenous art styles from tribes of Central India as an example of what could also be done  here in the Northeast.  To inspire the group Tara also screened “Nopokliba”, the first short animation film from Nagaland made by Meren Imchen,  and  few short films by international animation masters showing that animation is not limited to commercial cartoons on TV, and that it can be achieved beautifully using  all kinds of mediums from cel drawings to cut out puppets and even beads.    Students felt shy to share any of their own folktales at the occasion though one student admitted that he knew the Angami story of Man, Tiger and Spirit that has been chosen for the new animation film. 

As her fourth week in Nagaland concludes, Tara is convinced that the animation medium can provide a way for young Nagas to contribute to their cultural heritage where ancient traditions are suspended in time and according to one, “monotonous”.  Change is inevitable and artists always find new forms and means of communicating through their work so why not animation, when it holds so much appeals to the youth?  All the children at the screening event expressed their enjoyment of animation, and it is hoped that on the journey of understanding identity, animated storytelling may one day be an option in Nagaland. 

Press Release: 30 July 2011

An animation film screening programme was held at the Delhi Public School in Dimapur on Saturday 30 July. 

Students of class 8 expressed their enthusiasm for cartoons when they met Tara Douglas, Secretary of the Adivasi Arts Trust.  Tara was one of the animators who worked on a collection of tribal animation films called “The Tallest Story Competition”, for a Scottish company, West Highland Animation, in 2006, and she wanted to share the animated folktales from Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra with the students.  After the screening, Tara asked the students to vote for their favorite story, and she explained how local art styles had been chosen to give a unique look to each of the films.   The students had not heard any of the stories before, nor could they recollect any from their own tradition, but they all thought animation was a fun way of learning new things. 

Tara is presently in Nagaland for two months to complete an animated folktale from Nagaland for a new series of stories from the Northeast.  Students of Delhi Public School were intimated to look out for the first screening of the short film planned to be held at the Hornbill Festival in December. 

She encouraged the youngsters by telling them of her own experiences as an animator and she proposed it as something they could do in the future but she also warned them that animation is very hard work. “An animator really needs to be interested.  Unlike other jobs, it goes on long after regular office hours, but because it is magic an animator is happy to work hard,” she said, reminding them that “we do not mind working hard to do something that we enjoy.  An animator first has to imagine the film in his mind.  Each scene has to be sketched as a storyboard which is quite like a comic book, and you really have to get to know the characters before you can start using software to bring them to life. The first step anyone who is interested in animation can take is to keep alert for good stories.”

Meetings with animators and artists

Design Stash is a cool new design company in Dimapur, Nagaland.  The studio is an enterprise started by a group of Nagas who were based in Mumbai until a year and a half ago.  Anakito Assumi  (Aki) is a graduate in Animation from the National Institute of Design and his partner is young  designer Lipok Yanger.  They pooled in their resources, renovated a rundown apartment in Dimapur turning it into a stylish open plan studio, and last year Aki was commissioned to illustrate “Folktales from North East of India”, published by the North East Zone Cultural Centre and Heritage Publishing House.  The collection consists of forty short stories, five from each of the states of the North East region, and Aki has experimented with various interesting artistic styles for the illustrations.  He jokingly tells me that he is now an expert in folktales, and he shows me his work for a comic book on folktales of Nagaland.  For this project, commissioned by the State Department of Art and Culture, Aki will use a different style for each story.  The styles vary from black and white comic art to collage and painterly techniques of water colour washes.  The stories seem to be replete with spirits: Foreboding monstrous ones, angels deprived of their wings and spirits that teach mankind how to dance.  The story of Man Tiger and Spirit is well known to Aki and he points out the association between the folktale and a belief  in a special relationship between Man and Tiger that was prevalent before Christianity in Nagaland. 

The usual exchange at such meetings between people of the digital generation is data from hard drives.  Before I leave, Aki asks me to show his team around the fundamentals of Maya, so I demonstrate how to make a simple three dimensional object, set up lighting, texturing and movement and then render it, taking time to reassure the group not to be put off by the daunting technical terminology of the software.   

Aki tells me that it is tough to have the spirit of an entrepreneur in Nagaland and he shares concern that the team will find enough work to sustain their business. 

The Hope Centre of Excellence for dance, music and art was opened two years ago by Z. Mozhui and his wife, Zubeno in Nagarjang, Dimapur.  I was invited there to present certificates at the closing ceremony of a weeklong Art Workshop led by Mumbai based artist, Aditi Chitre.  The workshop had been sponsored by the North East Zone Cultural Centre and all the artwork created by the students, ranging in age from the youngest at seven to the eldest at seventeen was on display.  It was an impressive show, and Aditi was enthusiastic about the latent talent that she had noticed in the children.  The workshop had explored the mediums of collage, sketching, painting, clay modeling and animation.  She explained that the last three days had been dedicated to animation, with children choosing their own stories, animating their clay models and recording narration.  She also told me that they had been present during the editing process as the sequences were turned into four short films, so in effect they had been the directors.

Zubeno showed me around the centre, which was holding music classes  by the Head of the Singing Department, renowned singer from Nagaland Nise Meruno and by visiting faculty that had come from outside Nagaland.  She explained that the centre is the only place in the state where classical ballet is taught by a teacher from Malaysia, and that they put on a yearly performance at the Hornbill Festival in December.  She told me that this year they are planning to stage a musical based on folktales of Nagaland that has received inputs from Gilles Shuyen, a French dancer, choreographer and director who has been visiting Nagaland for many years.      The production will be a style of modern fusion and when I asked her about this, she revealed that the young generation do not have much interest in the pure form of traditional dance but are captivated by modern forms of expression.  In the discussion I began to realize that traditional cultural does not offer scope for change or development by the young generation as it is suspended in time, but naturally youth would like to infuse their cultural activities with impressions gained through their own experiences of change in Naga society. Furthermore, a modern style can unite tribes and art forms in a way that is restricted by traditional practices.  This is important when remembering the diversity of tribes in the state. 

In conversation with Mr. Mozhui (Vizo) I learnt that the unusual attraction for western classical music was an influence from the Christian missionaries, and he told me that there was undeniably a preference for violin and piano over instruments such as the sitar.   Grandfathers and fathers had been introduced to western hymns and until more recent times, there had always been negative connotations associated with the people from the plains, instigated by the presence of the Indian army.  My forefathers (the British) he said, had  oil and tea interests in Assam.  The hill areas were largely left alone, with occasional punitive expeditions sent to suppress his forefathers (the Nagas) who would sometimes raid the tea plantations.  As a result Nagas became too independent and he felt that they now needed to learn to be a cohesive group. 

I wanted to know how a whole population had been coerced into accepting a foreign religion so completely at a time when  there had been no common language of communication between the American and British missionaries and the Nagas:   Vizo expressed his personal belief in the power of the word God (the Bible) and the relative innocence of the Nagas who accepted Christianity with total faith; religion is  undeniably a binding force of Naga society today.  

Meetings with animators and artists

Sundays in Nagaland are generally very quiet; everything is shut, and there is little point in thinking of going out.  At home here now in the derelict guesthouse in the jungle, tucked away quietly behind the North East Zone Cultural Centre, it was a day for visitors.  The first was Aditi Chitre, an artist based in Mumbai who I had met several months ago at the screening of her 26 minute animation film, “Journey To Nagaland”, at the India International Centre in Delhi.  Like me, Aditi has fallen for Nagaland and she is now back on her fifth visit (like me), to conducting a week long Art Workshop at the Hope Centre of Excellence for Dance, Music and Art in Nagarjang, Dimapur. 

We spent several hours comparing experiences in Nagaland and exchanging films from our hard drives.  Aditi’s film, commissioned by PSBT, took her two and a half years to complete and it tells a story of a woman who returns to Nagaland in search of her roots.   During the research period for the film, Aditi visited Chisemi in Phek District and she later went back to conduct an art workshop there for school children.  So inspired was she by the response and outcome that she is determined to find sponsorship for a follow-up workshop to teach students how to write and illustrate their own stories.  Aditi felt that Naga youth are mostly shy and reserved and are neither taught nor encouraged to do art.    She explained that she also involves parents by inviting them to see the outcome for themselves so that they will recognize and support the artistic potential of their children.  Aditi was familiar with the story of Man Tiger and Spirit and she told me that it is shared by several tribes.  She showed me illustrations of the story made by the children in her workshop and she also revealed a detail that from another version of the tale that I had not heard before.   As we walked a kilometer to the highway for Aditi to find an auto rickshaw back into Dimapur, she related her experience in the previous workshop, where students had been asked to adapt traditional stories but had been unable to reconsider the stories in any new way.     On my return, I reflect on my happiness at knowing Aditi, who is both inspiring and adventurous.

A short while later, a gang of about a dozen young Nagas arrived at the guesthouse, in three cars.  It was Lima and Sari, my Ao friends from the Nagaland Institute of IT and Multimedia in Dimapur, with their relatives and friends, and they had come with gifts of beautiful Ao and Konyak jewelry for me! 

I had conducted a one day Introduction to Animation seminar and workshop last year at their centre above the garage for 75 students, and I recall the day well – It had been extremely busy with three sessions of film screenings and practical cut out animation, and the gang obviously remembered me too.  Sari and Lima are now proposing to raise funds from the State Government for a 3 day workshop with me at their Institute at the end of August, and they had come to discuss details of the programme, so as to advertise it.

This day has rejuvenated my hope for the youth here in Nagaland.  I am proud to know such an optimistic, enthusiastic group of bright young Nagas who are motivated to do something for themselves despite the unusual difficulties faced here - poor infrastructure and undercurrents of frustration and unrest.  I appreciate the efforts of my friends and I know that they will arrange a fine programme for us because they are an efficient team.

Intermission: There is nothing as charming as a pineapple farm!

It is called Gaspani, the place where you will find pineapple farms in Nagaland.  It was a regular Saturday afternoon outing, of the kind you might have here in Nagaland.  Climbing up into the hills on the road to Kohima, the air is comfortably cooler than it is in Dimapur, and in monsoon the dense jungle is verdant and humming with life.  You feel a spontaneous surge of good feeling, which bursts into delight on seeing the bamboo stalls piled high with fresh, bright pineapples, the air smelling of them too.  The road bends and twists up and up, and then you spot them on the left, the most charming pineapple farms that you can ever imagine! 

We stopped at one of the stalls, parking.  Soon we had the sweetest of pineapples juicy and dripping all over our hands.  On the rolling hillside behind was my pineapple farm; I pretended, though I knew it really belonged to the Church.  Seeing the little bamboo field hut at the top, I wanted to pretend that I was going home as I clambered up the hill, in between the pineapple plants. 

Pineapples are so attractive on the plant that they never fail to draw a smile.  My companion told me that there could be 10,000 pineapple plants growing on four acres of land, and we calculated an estimated income for the farm.  It seemed to be a good business option.   Under favourable conditions, a pineapple plant yields a crop within two years.   Once established in neat rows, work on the farm would consist of weeding and harvesting.   A workforce of ten would need a week to weed the entire farm, which would be repeated 6-7 times a year.   Laying our hands on surplus, discarded pineapple plants, I claimed three.  We also carried off handfuls of ripe pineapples at 25 rps each. 

I wondered whether pineapples are indigenous to Nagaland, and I made a note to ask my friend Abong, (a Naga who does animation), if he could model a computer generated pineapple plant for the animation film.  (Now that sounds absurd – but what I really mean is that the film could do with a pineapple plant in it, for decoration).  I was happy to have replenished my pineapple supply and back in the bare, Spartan guesthouse they lie there as ornaments in my room, monsoon rain pouring down outside.