A Serious Wedding (जे सी बी रवनवा) – New Ethnofiction Film!

Short Synopsis

A radical love story between a young man and a tree. Can the community’s songs help him save his love from being cut down?

Director Statement

For over a decade, I have been researching the role of songs and other vocal traditions in navigating relationships between humans and other/more than humans in the villages of Bihar. The ethno-fiction film ‘A Serious Wedding’ (JCB Ravanva) is the result of my long-term collaboration with Bihar-based traditional singer Aaji and members of her village community. 

After I completed my PhD fieldwork in December 2021, community members expressed interest in creating a film about deforestation in their village. Meanwhile, Aaji told me about a local tradition in which community members marry young men and women to non-humans (such as trees, ponds, wells, etc.) so they become fully responsible for their care. She shared with me many songs and stories that highlight these traditions, and together, we collaboratively developed the film concept through ethnographic research. 

After that, our team worked on this community-based experiment using the ethno-fiction filmmaking approach. This involved working on the script, songs and dialogues with many community members, collaborating with amazing sound artist Nithin Shams on recording, mixing and mastering the film sounds, and creating with the super talented Shreya Bhatia posters inspired by old Hindi and Bhojpuri popular films. 

Some community members played themselves, while others who worked in factories, construction and carpentry took a short leave from work to play their role of a romantic activist, a lawyer and a District Magistrate. The resultant film is an unconventional eco-activist ethno-fiction that highlights the Bhojpuri vocal traditions performed during weddings between humans and trees. It features the marriage of a young man and a tree, a union that successfully thwarts the state government’s plans to construct a highway which would otherwise destroy numerous trees in the area. Through songs, rituals and fiction filmmaking, the participants are able to reimagine future scenarios and stage their everyday environmental activism.

We will be submitting to anthropological film festivals this year and the film will be available to watch online sometime next year. However, if you are keen on screening the film at your university, please send me an email at espiritokashi@gmail.com

Follow the film – instagram.com/jcbravanva

Film festivals organizers can invite and access the film – https://filmfreeway.com/jcbravanva

Key Cast:

Vibhash Yadav (Lead actor), Sunil Sharma (Vakeel Sahab), Vidya Sagar (DM Sahab), Sarfu Ansari (Guru), Toni Lal Alkar (YouTuber), Aaji (Lead singer), Tapasya Baba (Pandit ji), Krishna Mahato, Balwant Kumar. 

Director – Rajat Nayyar 

Script Development – Maharajya Kunwar, Rana El Kadi & Rajat Nayyar 

Sound design – Nithin Shams Film Posters – Shreya Bhatia 

Production team – Chitraang Nayyar, Gurpreet Jansua, Rahul Tiwari 

Research advisor – Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston 

Translations – सौरभ मिश्र, Rana El Kadi 

Producer – Espírito Kashi 

Supported by – Bourses Vanier Scholarships, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), York U AMPD, Emergent Futures CoLab, York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR)

Dedicated to my grandmother. We miss you a lot!