The Animation Workshop is starting to attract attention from students of Centurion University, Bhubaneshwar.  They didn't know what to expect, when they began to hear whispers about this animation thing going on in the Autocad Lab.  The students shyly approached us in the corridors and their eyes were shining: they were interested in joining our project, they said.    I promised them animation film screenings every evening -  if they could only make it across to room no 6, in the main building at around 5pm.  Today we saw a few classics; and indeed, some of them, such as those by Norman McClaren over 60 years ago, were quite in the 'ancient' category as far as the students were concerned.  They had never imagined that a chair could come to life with such skill and character, as in "The Chairy Tale", it was pure magic.  The theme of this screening were films with  some familiar flavour of Indian design, They laughed with enjoyment at  message of "Love Thy Neighbour".  Ishu Patel's folktale "How Death Came to Earth" made in 1971, was followed with the last screening of the day, "Manjoor Jhali, the Creation of the Peacock" - the first story in the "Tales of the Tribes" series that the film makers, who were present,  are working to complete.

Reading from The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: An Autobiography (1998: 100), with the students of Architectural Planning at the University, Monday afternoon:

A Delhi news-magazine recently referred to me as ‘that freakish Englishman, the brilliance of whose eccentricities even Oxford could not dim’, though it admitted that I had ‘been able to discover poetry and art in strange places.’  I do not resent this curious judgement, for there is nothing very discreditable in being eccentric, but I wonder whether it is really true.  Is it eccentric to live in beautiful scenery in the hills among some of the most charming people in the country, even though they may be ignorant and poor? I would have thought that on other standards it was far more eccentric to live in the noise, the dirt and disturbances of a town, to waste ones time in clubs, playing silly games with cards or knocking little balls about on tennis court or golf course. To go to a village to find a cause that is worth living for, to escape from the infantile gossip and the tedious recreations of civilization may be unusual , but I do not think there is anything specially eccentric about it. 

An Animation Workshop is currently taking place at the Centurion University in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa and it is organised and coordinated by the Adivasi Arts Trust (UK).  The objective of the project is to complete the final chapter of the "Tales of the Tribes" series of short animated films.  In fact, the five short films, stories from Nagaland, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Madhya Pradesh are complete; it has been a five year long project.  What remains for this workshop are the linking sequences in which the character of Dr Verrier Elwin is brought to life -  animated - to introduce the five films.

Why Verrier Elwin? Well he was a storyteller par excellence.  In fact, Dr Elwin spent decades documenting the oral tribal storytelling traditions from Central and North East India, and he published several weighty books of the same.  Besides, Elwin was unusual; he actually lived with the tribes back in those days before Indian Independence, and he recognised that they had unique and valuable cultures that contrasted the dominant image of primitive backwardness.

Today, the voice for the Verrier Elwin presenter character was provided by a professional voice over artist, Ravi Manie.  This marks a milestone - now that the character has a voice,  we can  hear his opinions and learn from his knowledge.  The visual design for the character has also been decided, and  the young artist Arak is busy creating the angles and poses required for the animated sequences.
The team did not know much about Elwin when they started; hardly anyone knows of the great contribution made by Elwin to the tribal cultures, and this project aims to resolve that by bringing the anthropologist, writer and visionary in an accessible form to young audiences in India and worldwide.

Resource for research on Dr Verrier Elwin:

Interview with Cristoph von Furer-Haimendorf, Part 2 of 3 (see 29 minutes into the interview)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jQHNjSWAg4

The Animation Workshop to develop the character of Verrier Elwin as the Presenter of the Tales of the Tribes collection of short animated folktales from India, has started.  The three week long event is taking place at the Centurion University in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, and will continue until the end of the month.

The location is a sleepy setting.  Located amidst the lush green fields of Eastern India, the pace of life is leisurely, and existence is much less stressed than has become our normal experience.   At the end of the second day and the eager team of five that have come for the event, are yet to be introduced to the students.  In the meantime, they have a large, well equipped computer lab available for their use, and have been making it 'ready', essentially getting the systems into place to bring the character to life.

The first stage has been to go through the script, written by the co-ordinator, Tara Douglas.  The three young animators who have decided to get involved in the visualisation of this project, are now deconstructing the requirements and examining the sequences, shot by shot.  These sequences will establish links between the five stories, through the artwork and the narrative, as Verrier Elwin introduces each of the films, recaps the punchlines and guides our audiences into the supernatural and sublime world of tribal storytelling.  This phase will result in a storyboard, which provides the plan for the labour intensive work of actually bringing the scenes to life in animation.

  

Animation Workshop in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa

The Adivasi Arts Trust (UK) has been invited to coordinate a three week long Animation Workshop to take place at the Centurion University, Bhubaneshwar.  This event will take place from 10 August onwards.

The objective of this workshop is to create the remaining animation for the Tales of the Tribes series of five short films that are adaptations of indigenous storytelling for the audio visual medium. For these final sequences, an animated "Master of Ceremonies" will be created to introduce the short films, and to contextualize them a bit. We will be working on an adaptation of the character of  Dr Verrier Elwin to introduce the five short films and offer a Trophy for the story that gets the most votes from young audiences.

The character of Verrier Elwin will be designed by young Garo artist Arak Sangma from Meghalaya. Arak is travelling from Guwahati for this work. The animation will be done by three graduates from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad: Wangdan Wangpan (from Arunachal Pradesh), Rabindra Bhagat (from Jharkhand) and Kirat Brahma (from Assam). We will also have interactive sessions, film screenings and participation from interested students of the Centurion University.

The character will be 2D: that is hand painted and scanned for manipulation in the computer using software.

Elwin is an appropriate person to introduce the stories having spent most of his life living with tribal communities first in Central India and later in the North East region. He has documented many volumes of folktales and his published collections include Myths of Middle India (1949), Tribal Myths of Orissa (1954), Myths of the North-East Frontier of India, Volume 1 (1958), A New Book of Tribal Fiction (1970), and Folk-tales of Mahakoshal (1980).  Elwin (1998:144) explained that his method of translation was simple and that above all, he avoided either adding any new images or suppressing those of the original, and in this way he was committed to maintaining the authentic meanings of the stories as far as possible.  

During the workshop we will be giving regular updates here on this blog, so do follow along with us as we explore the great work of Verrier Elwin, and learn how to bring him to life again for new young audiences.

The Tales of the Tribes is nearing completion.  It consists of an animation series of five short animated folktales from tribal communities in India.  The five stories are:  Manjoor Jhali (the Creation of the Peacock) from the Pardhan Gonds, Man Tiger Spirit from the Angami in Nagaland, Abotani from the Tani group in Arunachal Pradesh,  Nye Mayel Kyong from the Lepcha in Sikkim, and last but not least, Tapta, from Manipur.

This sample collection will be brought together into a cohesive programme by our animated presenter, a graphic representation of Verrier Elwin, who qualifies as the translator of these stories to the wider world.

I recently returned from Shillong, where Elwin spent the last ten years of his life, in his role as Advisor on Tribal Affairs to the Governor of Assam.  In Shillong, I met with his family, and we are going to collaborate to make the great man more accessible to the young generation through the medium of animation.  The character design is to be done by talented Garo artist Arak Sangma, and the animation will be created by a local team, with the help of Souvik Mujumdar, right there in Shillong.  We are hoping for our support from the Department of Art and Culture, where Matsiewdor War has received our proposal for a workshop early next year, to proceed with bringing these sequences, in which Elwin introduces the films, to life.

Elwin’s  contribution to the knowledge of tribal cultures in India was profound.  I was surprised to find out how little is known about him even in Shillong.  But this will be changed.  We hope you will join us on this important journey.  Indeed it is the first animation series of tribal stories to be made in India, as a collaboration by young artists and animators.  We will be recording the whole process with our mentor, Verrier Elwin,  and we will be updating it here, so you can follow along with us.

Verrier Elwin and the Tales of the Tribes

The Tales of the Tribes is a sample collection of five short animated films based on indigenous storytelling traditions from India. The journey of this project - that of adapting a few tribal folktales for the medium of animation - began in 2009, with a three week long Animation Workshop that took place in Dimapur and was supported by the Government of Nagaland. Two years later and the story from Nagaland - an Angami tale of three brothers - was completed and screened at the Hornbill Festival in Nagaland in 2011. This was followed by animated folktales from Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, also made in partnership with local organisations. The last animated story of the collection that remains to be completed is from the Pardhan Gonds of Central India, and it relates a mythical story of how the peacock was created. 

The collection of animated films is still in production by the Adivasi Arts Trust (www.adivasiartstrust.org), a charity registered in the UK that is dedicated to to promoting and preserving Indian indigenous art, culture and storytelling through animation and digital media. The Tales of the Tribes follows a format that found success in an earlier series of adapted Adivasi stories from Central India. The Tallest Story Competition produced by West Highland Animation in Scotland, was completed in 2006. This earlier series of five short films had been introduced by a Scottish children’s comedian represented as an animated character who introduced the programme as a storytelling competition with the five films competing for the most votes from young audiences. The cartoon presenter called Norman was the master of ceremonies for The Tallest Story Competition, and he also established the cross cultural link to make the tribal stories accessible to audiences in Scotland. 

Over 10,000 children voted for their favourite story in The Tallest Story Competition after the screening events held in schools and cultural centres in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa. In 2007, a promised Trophy was awarded to a Pardhan Gond artist who had been invited to the Inverness Film Festival in Scotland to represent the group of Pardhan artists that had created all the artwork for the adaptation of their story, the most popular Best of the Best.

The screenings had shown that Adivasi children enjoyed watching their own stories in animated form. The format of a competition was a good way to record the responses to the films and interestingly, the children usually voted for the story from their own community above all the rest. However, with well defined characters and narrative, the clear, concise moral outcome of the Gond tale - that of getting what one deserves - was particularly satisfying for audiences when they “get” the message, making it the overall winner.

Now building on the success of this earlier series and with her own background in animation, Tara Douglas has decided to reproduce and extend the competition to include more animated tribal stories from the North East. This time the programme was planned and produced entirely in India in collaboration with the local communities that are represented in the programme. Learning of the extent to which the young generation of tribal children are now exposed to mass media entertainment and on discovering their enthusiasm for watching animated programmes, Tara also noticed that these young people were losing touch with their own oral traditions. This project was then developed by her as practice-led PhD research through Bournemouth University in the UK, to investigate if participatory film-making practices could help to reconnect the young generation with their oral heritage.

The series is now reaching completion and these films need to be introduced by an animated character who will also invite audiences to choose their favorite story. This time Verrier Elwin has been chosen as the presenter for the new collection of films.   

How many of the young generation know anything about the renowned British ethnographer? By setting up the character of Elwin as the master of ceremonies for the new programme, this acknowledges his outstanding contribution to the documentation of Indian tribal history, culture and the volumes of folktales that have provided source material for this collection of animated films.  

Elwin’s autobiography The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin (1998) paints a picture of him as charming, perceptive, entertaining, and somewhat eccentric. In fact, Elwin (1902-1964) had a remarkably brilliant life. He first graduated with distinction from Oxford University and he then travelled to India as an Anglo-Catholic missionary, urged on by a desire to serve the poor as reparation for the recent history of colonial exploitation. His early contact with Mahatma Gandhi led him on another trajectory, and he became active in the cause for Indian Independence, even going as far as to vow that he would walk barefoot until Independence had been achieved. His future in India came under threat when he was denied permission to return from a visit to England until he could provide an undertaking to have nothing further to do with politics. So instead, Elwin established himself in a Gond village, and he worked consistently to benefit the most impoverished. 

Elwin’s work has generated controversy during his lifetime and since. His unconventional sentimental approach of activism was criticized by the more formal, somber scholars of his time and he has been further misinterpreted as an isolationist: that is, anti-progressive and anti-nationalist, for he had maintained that the tribal societies needed protection from too rapid assimilation into the mainstream. However, what stands out is his devotion to the tribes: he lived and integrated with the Gonds in Central India for 27 years before stepping into the role as Tribal Advisor to the Governor of Assam and basing himself in Shillong until the end of his life. Elwin’s intention to make the tribal people known had been founded on the idea that this would increase affection and respect for them from the rest of the country. Were he still living in Shillong to this day, we can presume his delight at the reinterpretation of oral stories using the medium of animation by local young artists. 

His long term commitment to the tribes makes Elwin the right candidate to present the animated tribal stories. Tara Douglas outlines her hope that this remaining phase of the animation production will take place in Shillong, and that the inclusion of Elwin to bring all the stories together into a cohesive narrative and also inviting young audiences to choose their favorite story, will provide an important contribution from Meghalaya for the tribal animation programme. 

A young Garo artist Arak Sangma is eager to design the Elwin character for the animation programme. Arak also happens to be a great nephew of Elwin, so it is fitting that he should explore a graphic representation of the great man. Tara has contacted the Directorate of Art and Culture in Shillong and she is hoping to organise a workshop to set the artistic team on their way. The first step will be to draw a storyboard from the script for the linking sequences of Elwin, in which he meanders through the familiar landscape of the films and interacts with various characters from the stories. The Elwin character design is required from all the angles demanded by the animated sequences and the artwork will then be scanned and manipulated using software. So look out for Elwin in the near future as he invites audiences to choose their favorite story. No doubt there will be a Trophy for the winning story in this collection too.