Pradip Kurbah’s Iewduh to go international; Meghalaya filmmaker gets nominated for Kim Jiseok Award
SHILLONG | Oct 1, 2019:
Renowned filmmaker, Pradip Kurbah from Meghalaya has been nominated for the Kim Jiseok Award for his much-awaited movie — "Iewduh", at the 24th Busan International Film Festival to be held from October 3-12.
Kurbah is among the 8 other directors from across Asia who have nominated for this award. Directors from Iran, Pakistan, Japan, Hong Kong and Thailand are included in this list. From India, only directors have been selected — Pradip Kurbah for Iewduh and Gurvinder Singh for his film – Bitter Chestnut.
Meanwhile, Cinematographer, Pradip Daimary of Iewduh has been officially selected for the Asian Cinematography Awards to be held in Manila Philippines 22-23 February 2020.
WHAT IS THE MOVIE ALL ABOUT?
"Iewduh" is a story of everyday people at this busiest market in the state; a human and emotion-driven story which talks about the relationship among these people, their problems and challenges.
"In these two years that I have worked on the script, I realised that we usually ignore these people in Iewduh; every lane of Iewduh has a story to tell, so how about telling their stories this time; because all these people are heroes to someone or the other," Director, Pradip Kurbah told TNT-The Northeast Today.
Kurbah further asserted that Iewduh is not only about the bad and the ugly (negative aspect) — "There's good too, you know!", he said. "There are some negative elements in the film which I have kept it very subtly. I don't want to highlight more on the negative side because, everywhere you see, it is all negative– depression, loneliness; So this time, the highlight and focus was more on the feel good factor," added the Director.
FILM INDUSTRY IN MEGHALAYA AND NORTHEAST INDIA
In as far as film making is concerned, there are no dearth of brilliant and creative people. During the past few years, the Northeast has seen many award winning directors, who, through their movies, have managed to share the unheard stories of the people of the region.
Meghalaya has seen filmmakers like Pradip Kurbah, Dominic Sangma, Nicholas Kharkongor, Wanphrang Diengdoh and many more who have taken the industry to new heights.
It is important for us to expand our market, said Kurbah adding that it is imperative for filmmakers to look beyond Meghalaya and not to remain stagnant and blame the government for everything, for lack of facilities and the likes.
"When you make films, you should look at various factors relating to post production — how you release the movie, how you recover form it because at the end of the day, film making is also a business," he said.
He also stated that it is important for film makers to understand the fact that cinema plays an important role in bridging the gap between the region and the rest of India.