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Our Correspondent
Imphal, June 3 (EMN): In a first, the 17th Mumbai International Film Festival for documentary, short fiction and animation films (MIFF-2022) opened with a Manipuri documentary film on Wednesday and paid homage to ace Manipuri cinematographer, Irom Maipak, who passed away during the COVID pandemic in 2021.
Maipak is Manipur’s only national award winning cinematographer and the founding president of All Manipur Cinematographers Association. MIFF opened with ‘Meiram (fireline)’, a Manipuri documentary film by James Khangembam on May 29.
Fifty four-year-old Maipak had won the National Film Award for best non-feature film cinematography in the non-feature section for the 2001 film ‘The Monpas of Arunachal Pradesh’ at the 49th National Film Awards held in 2002.
He also won the Navroze Contractor Award for the best documentary cinematography in the 8th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala 2015 for the film Phum Shang meaning floating biomass hut.
“We are really grateful to MIFF and the ministry of Information and Broadcasting”, said Haobam Pabankumar, prominent director and filmmaker of Manipur. He (Maipak) was one of the best documentary cinematographers of the country and I was lucky to be associated with him. He shot almost all my doc films. He was also a very good human being, he added.
Pabankumar along with his colleague filmmaker Ronel Haobam are attending MIFF in Mumbai, which is scheduled to continue till June 4.
Eight documentary films from Manipur will be screened at MIFF-2022, which is one of the biggest documentary film festivals in the world, organised by the Films Division, ministry of Information and Broadcasting, government of India.