A file picture of Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla editing Joymoti

Calcutta, April 13: Rupkonwar Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla — the man who gave Assam its first film and India its second — could well be donning the mantle of Assam’s cultural ambassador, 52 years after his death.

Waking up to the “grim reality” that some of Assam’s greatest cultural icons, including Rupkonwar, remain little known outside, the Tarun Gogoi government has embarked on an aggressive campaign to restore a “nationally-relevant pride of place” for them.

A film and cultural festival showcasing the best of Assamese cinema will kick-start the campaign in Calcutta, organised to commemorate simultaneously the birth centenaries of Rupkonwar Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla and Pramathesh Barua.

Calcutta was the unanimous choice for the first of the string of functions for more reasons than one.

The venue is Nandan — the hub of Bengal’s famed film fraternity. Both Agarwalla and Barua operated out of Calcutta, though the former shot the first Assamese talkie, Joymoti, at the Bholaguri tea estate in 1933 after his return from Germany.

The name of the makeshift studio was Chitraban. Barua, after his return from France, embedded himself into the already flowering film industry in Bengal, having made Devdas.

Seminars and interactions with Calcutta-based students doing research on Assamese films and literature (modern Indian languages) are some of the highlights of the three-day festival. Rupkonwar’s Joymoti, a restoration of the original by Bhupen Hazarika will be screened.

Hazarika has painstakingly reconstructed the first Assamese film using original clippings after the film was rendered “unscreenable” due to print damage.

“We have been appalled by the fact few people outside Assam realise who Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla was. We have decided to establish him nationally, albeit posthumously, and promote his Joymoti as the second Indian talkie,” Assam commissioner of cultural affairs department J.P. Saikia told The Telegraph here.

A two-member delegation comprising Saikia and the managing director of the Assam State Film Development Corporation, D.R. Rajbongshi, was in Calcutta to prepare the ground for the festival to be held on April 21, 22 and 23. They also met the director of Nandan, Anshu Sur.

The festival will have films by leading film-makers, including Bhabendranath Saikia, Jahnu Barua, Gautam Bora, Jwngdao Bodosa and Bidyut Chakraborty. Each of them is credited with making Assamese cinema what it is; distinctly regional yet appreciated worldwide — from Locarno to Tokyo film festivals.

D.R. Rajbongshi, also the secretary of the state-owned Jyoti Chitraban studio, said though most in the field are familiar with the studio in Guwahati, few know that it has been named after Assam’s first film-maker. “Chitraban was in fact the makeshift studio Agarwalla had constructed at the Bhulaguri estate. Few people know that Joymoti was the second Indian film, sandwiched between Alam Ara and Raja Harishchandra. And still fewer people know that Agarwalla used dubbing for the first time in India for his very first film,” he said, giving nuggets of little-known information about one of Assam’s cultural icons.