Moji Riba during the filming of the documentary. (PTI)

Itanagar, Feb. 19 (PTI): An award-winning documentary filmmaker has come up with a project to preserve on celluloid the rich ethnic culture of Arunachal Pradesh, which is continuously being undermined by the onslaught of modernity.

Moji Riba, 36, the winner of a Rolex award last year for his work on the preservation of the tribal heritage of Arunachal Pradesh, will start filming a cinematic time capsule, documenting the life and culture of 15 ethnic groups, from April.

Riba is contributing Rs 23 lakh from his prize money to finance the Mountain Eye project, which may cost anything between Rs 60 lakh and Rs 70 lakh. Talking about the project, Riba said Arunachal Pradesh has the greatest concentration of cultural diversity in the country, with over 25 major tribes inhabiting the state’s 84,000 square km of hilly terrain.

“But this extraordinary cultural tapestry faces the risk of being blown away by the storm of outside influence. The situation has turned so grave that a majority of Arunachalee students now seldom speak their own mother tongue at home,” Riba said.

“Consequently, their traditions and culture are disappearing fast because in the absence of written scripts they are handed down to generations orally,” he added.

Riba hopes to get the requisite funds for the ambitious project from the government and leaders of different communities and individuals in the form of donations.

Born to a politician’s family, Riba, however, preferred to stay away from a political career, arguing that politics no longer remains service-oriented.

“Amid the mad rush to catch up with modernity, the tribals would one day come back to their roots which he would try to preserve through his celluloid effort,” he said.

Citing an example, he said the Japanese, after embracing western culture and ways in a big way, are now adopting their ancestors’ unique indigenous culture.

Moji said having done his education outside Arunachal, he neither knew the native language Adi-Galo well nor understood the intricacies of the cultural traditions.

Moji came back to Arunachal on finishing his studies to set up the Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation (CCRD) with the support of Ford Foundation in 1997. Simultaneously, he also started learning the language of his ancestors.

The CCRD built an archive of more than 700 hours of audio-visual footage on tribal ritual practices, folklore, architecture, agriculture and pisciculture on the same plot in the Apatani plateau, herbal medicine and 3,000 still pictures.

Moji’s work was exhibited and presented at the London School of Economics and other world fora.

The centre also organised seminars and workshops on tribal transition projects to understand the change in culture in Arunachal Pradesh over a period of 150 years in collaboration with the British Museum and British Council.

In regard to the project, Moji said 15 youths would be selected from as many representative tribes on the basis of their actual residence in the identified villages in consultation with the village elders and community leaders.

They would undergo a 20-day training programme at CCRD in audio-visual documentation to generate more than 3,000 hours of materials. The data would be analysed and processed into documentaries to be kept in archives.