When Gauhati Cine Club Hosted Its First Film Festival in 1978

Half a century ago, in the autumn of 1978, the Gauhati Cine Club quietly staged what would become one of the most quietly influential gatherings of regional cinema in post-independence India. The event unfolded in borrowed halls across Guwahati, with a hand-painted banner, a borrowed 16mm projector, and a programme of films that nobody outside Assam had heard of. Yet the festival laid the groundwork for a film culture that would later flourish alongside the better-known circuits of Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai.

The story of that first festival has never been told in full. Archival scraps sit in club members' homes, photographs are tucked in cardboard boxes, and a single mimeographed catalogue survives in the club's library. What follows is a reconstruction drawn from those fragments, oral histories, and the personal papers of the late Bhupen Hazarika's circle, who lent their moral weight to the event.

For audiences following the club from Sydney, Melbourne, or Brisbane, the tale offers a useful counterpoint to the polished international festivals held at places like the Sydney Opera House each June. Smaller gatherings, organised by cinephiles rather than corporations, can leave a far deeper mark on a regional film culture.

The spark behind the 1978 festival

The idea for a dedicated film festival in Guwahati had circulated among club members for at least three years before 1978. In the mid-1970s, the club had already established a reputation for Saturday evening screenings of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Tapan Sinha, held in the back room of a tea-stall near Panbazar. Members would gather on wooden benches, pass around steel tumblers of Assam tea, and argue about editing choices long after the projector cooled.

The trigger came in 1977, when a visiting documentary maker from Pune donated a small collection of 16mm prints to the club. Within weeks, the committee realised that a one-off screening would do little justice to the material. A short festival, run over four evenings, would let audiences see each film twice, attend director talks, and participate in open-floor discussions that the club had long favoured.

Funding was modest. Members pooled personal savings, the local unit of the Indian Coffee Workers' Cooperative donated a few sacks of beans, and a small grant from the state cultural directorate covered hall rent. The festival was never advertised beyond Assam, but word travelled through the post office grapevine, university hostels, and the bustling lanes of Fancy Bazaar.

Films and filmmakers on the program

The final programme of that 1978 festival reflected the eclectic tastes of its organisers, who believed that regional cinema could only grow by learning from other traditions. Twenty-eight films were screened over four days, including features, shorts, and documentaries drawn from across South and Southeast Asia.

A handful of titles stood out and remain part of club folklore. The closing night drew tears with an early cut of what would become one of the most awarded Assamese films of the decade. A retrospective of works by an unsung Guwahati-based experimental filmmaker surprised even veteran critics. And a programme of indigenous Australian shorts, borrowed through a nascent network of cine-clubs in Adelaide and Perth, introduced local audiences to a continent they had only read about in geography books.

• Mrigayaa (1976), a Hindi feature whose use of silence influenced younger Assamese directors.
• Padma Nadir Majhi (1973), a Bengali film that resonated with Brahmaputra fishing communities.
• Two shorts by Jill Robb, sent by a Brisbane film collective, marking some of the earliest Australian films screened in Assam.
• A 12-minute experimental piece by a then-unknown Guwahati student, later celebrated as a forerunner of the New Assamese Cinema movement.

Challenges and grassroots support

Pulling the festival together was an exercise in patience. The only working projector in the club's possession was a vintage 16mm model, prone to overheating and lamp failure. Volunteer operators sat beside it through every screening, ready to swap reels, adjust framing, and occasionally blow gently on a hot gate to keep the image from melting.

Transport was another hurdle. Several prints arrived by train from Kolkata, carried in tin trunks that doubled as lunchboxes for the couriers. Local authorities were sceptical of a film event organised by a "club" rather than a government body, and permits for public screenings required persistent knocking on office doors. A sympathetic officer at the state information department eventually fast-tracked the paperwork after tasting the club's home-made pitha and cream biscuits during a long evening meeting.

Crowd response exceeded every expectation. Students from Cotton University queued from dawn for tickets. A small contingent of tea garden workers travelled by lorry from Dibrugarru, sleeping on the footpath outside the venue for two nights. Word even reached Darwin, where a curious letter from an Australian film society arrived weeks later, asking for a printed catalogue.

The festival's modest success rested on a handful of quiet supports that deserve to be remembered:

• Free accommodation for visiting filmmakers in members' family homes.
• Subsidised meals prepared by women's collectives from nearby wards.
• Voluntary translation of English-language film notes into Assamese overnight.
• A handwritten bulletin board updated daily outside the main hall.

Lasting impact on Assamese cinema

The most enduring legacy of the 1978 festival was the proof it offered that regional audiences would turn up, in numbers, for serious cinema. Before that autumn, many producers assumed that Assamese viewers preferred mainstream Hindi entertainers. The festival's packed rooms changed that calculation within a single season.

Within two years, three of the filmmakers who had screened short works went on to make their first features, and a new cooperative emerged to distribute them. The club's archive, today housed in a small room above the Guwahati office, lists more than 1,400 prints collected since 1978, a direct line back to the careful curation of that first event.

International curiosity grew slowly but steadily. A short note about the festival appeared in the 1980 edition of a Melbourne-based film journal, prompting exchanges with Australian cinephiles that continue today. Recent collaborations with archivists in Hobart have helped preserve fragile prints, and a small travelling retrospective toured Sydney in early 2024.

Remembering the festival today

The club's volunteer historians have spent the past two years piecing together the full story of that first festival, tracking down former projectionists, sound recordists, and ushers. Many are now in their seventies, and their memories are being recorded on digital video before time runs out.

Restoration work on the original equipment has also begun. The vintage projector used in 1978 was retired decades ago, but a similar model survives in the club's storage, and members are working to bring it back to working order. Those interested in supporting that effort can follow our ongoing project to restore the club's vintage 16mm projector, which has already drawn contributions from cinema lovers as far away as Canberra.

The club's connection to global causes has also deepened. A recent solidarity screening raised funds for a coastal pollution petition backed by a Mediterranean cultural association, reminding members that local film clubs have always been part of wider conversations.

If you have photographs, letters, or anecdotes from that 1978 gathering, the club would be grateful to hear from you. Drop a line through the website, sign up as a member, or visit the archive room in Guwahati on any Saturday afternoon. Every fragment helps turn a half-forgotten weekend into the founding myth it deserves to be.