For the longest time, we didn't have theatres in Kohima, says Theja Rio, director of Ade (On a Sunday), which is the first short film from Nagaland to travel to the film festivals globally. Rio's family had a colour TV and the neighbours often came to his home for a collective viewing experience. That didn't stop Rio from dreaming about cinema and he found an ally in Nancy Nisa Beso, who grew up in a home located a floor below a VHS lending library called Mayfair. "And then there was a neighbour who would listen to the audio cassette of the 1975 classic, Sholay. He would do this every day at 5 pm," says Beso. She first met Rio when he was seven years old and she tried to dissuade him from filmmaking. But that did not deter him and having got admission to the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, UK, he started thinking about a short film on his childhood friend, Ade, who now worked in construction. "The first draft is what we shot. It was a love letter to the world I grew up in," says Rio. Ade (On a Sunday) is a simple, yet intricate film, shot in Pfuchama, a village in Nagaland that looks at the world through a seven-year-old's eyes. Rio used non-professional actors who could speak the Angami dialect and chose the boy who played Ade because of of his whistling skills. The film took three days to shoot. Says Beso, "Theja was adamant about using 16 mm because he wanted the film to have a nostalgic element to it." Once it had been shot, the film had to be sent by train to avoid any mishap while in flight. Ade (On a Sunday) has been to several film festivals and won the Royal Stag Large Barrel Short Film Award at the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) Film Festival in October. Rio is now working on his first feature film, set in the 1960s, focusing on the last remnants of the Konyak tribe who are resisting Christianity. Rio will use non-professional actors again and shoot on 16 mm film.

Prakash Raj

Game Changer

Taking Nagaland to the World

Only Famous