Documentary film
Permanent link: https://n2t.net/ark:15056/ofdn-f-000002
Trailer
“Sensitive and heart-touching!
Save your language to save your soul.”
“Scholars have played an important role in preserving the Kusunda language.”
“Preserves and immortalizes a language on the brink of extinction.”
“Ms. Gyani Maiya Sen talked about the heartbreaking situation: No one speaks Kusunda.”
About the film
The Kusunda people were once a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer community that settled in villages in the mid-western Nepalese district of Dang. They have long lost their native language, Mihaq (Kusunda), to acculturation and other barriers to active use. The community also lost its 83-year-old elder, Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda, in 2020, the last and only known fluent Kusunda speaker at the time. Filmed in Kulmor, in the Dang District, in 2018, this documentary is a memoir of Sen-Kusunda in her own words and a biography of her people, who were forced to abandon their language and cultural identity. Kusunda is being revived by Kamala Sen Khatri, Sen-Kusunda’s younger sister, and Uday Raj Aaley, a local researcher and the key collaborator this film.
This film was supported through a National Geographic Society grant.
Gyani Maiya was awarded Best Screenplay at the International Film & Entertainment Festival Australia (IFEFA) 2022, and was selected for the 6th International Folklore Film Festival 2023, Thrissur (India), Khamrubu International Short Film Festival 2023, Kamrup (India), Nepal America International Film Festival 2023, International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation at University of Hawaiʻi (US), Lanham (US), Balkan Can Kino, Athens (Greece), Bozok Film Festivali, Yozgat (Turkey), Festival RNAB, Sao Paulo, and Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions, Buckinghamshire (UK).
Reviews and publications
- Asia Matters For America, East-West Center [by Ramil Mercado]
- Global Voices [by Sanjib Chaudhary and Subhashish Panigrahi]—available in English, Malagasy, Português and Español
- Edex Live, The New Indian Express [by Seema Rajpal]
- Himal Khabar [in Nepali]
- Tuoitre Cuoituan [in Viet by Phan Bao]
For screenings, reviews, interviews and other queries, contact Subhashish Panigrahi.
Screenings
- June 2023: dWeb Camp 2023, Navarro (US)
- March 2023, 8th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (US)
- January 2023, Lost Origins Gallery, Washington D.C. (US)
