Joymoti: the first Assamese film

In 9th of march 1937, "Joymoti", the first Assamese feature film was released in the Rounak Cinema in Calcutta.
Made by the genius of a creative Artiste Late Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, it was based on the half historical story of a Princess who had to undergo untold suffering and ultimately death, that too in a public place, in the hands of a cruel,wily minister under the Ahom kings of Assam who wanted to rule Assam by killing or maiming all the princes of the ruling dynesty making them unfit to rule. The crime of the Princess was that she refused to disclose the whereabout of her beloved Prince Godapani as she knew it well that her husband was the best man to lead and rule Assam.
It was not only the first Assamese feature film and it was a Talkie too; and it was a unique technical success in many ways because the Assamese film took a giant leap to bypass the era of silent films.
Although the recognition came too late in the end of the last century only it was the first Indian film to be dubbed. Partly due to the moisture laden climatic conditions of Assam and the partly due to the incompetance of the sound recordist brought all the way from Lahore the audio part was impaired and the sounds were not at all clear im most of the film. But the difficulty of taking the whole team of more than forty artistes for rerecording the voices of equal number of characters from Assam to Lahore in those pre- independence days were not an easy task.

But undaunted, Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla went back to Lahore and dubbed all the voices of more than forty male and female characters all alone by his own voice in his wonderful artistic feat of mimicry and technical mastery.

Thus accidently the advanced technicque of Dubbing was adopted in an era when sound recordings of songs and instrumente were recorded at the place of shooting the film. And the rest is History now.

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