A Serious Wedding (जे सी बी रवनवा)

Short Synopsis

Bhojpuri ethnofiction film about 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, my research has explored how songs and other vocal traditions shape relationships between humans and more-than-human beings in the villages of Bihar. The ethno-fiction film A Serious Wedding (JCB Ravanva) emerged from a long-term collaboration with the traditional Bhojpuri singer Aaji and members of her village community.

After completing my PhD fieldwork in December 2021, community members expressed a desire to create a film about the deforestation threatening their village. Around the same time, Aaji shared stories and songs from a local tradition in which young men and women are ritually married to non-human entities—trees, ponds, wells—so they become caretakers responsible for their well-being. These narratives became the foundation for a collaborative process of ethnographic and imaginative filmmaking.

We developed the film through a deeply participatory, community-based ethno-fiction approach. The script, songs, and dialogues were co-written with many village members. We worked with the brilliant sound artist Nithin Shams, who recorded, mixed, and mastered the film’s audio, and with the talented Shreya Bhatia, who designed posters inspired by vintage Hindi and Bhojpuri cinema.

Some community members performed as themselves. Others—who typically work in factories, construction, or carpentry—took time off to portray a romantic activist, a lawyer, and a District Magistrate. The result is an unconventional, eco-activist ethno-fiction that draws from Bhojpuri vocal traditions and wedding rituals to tell a speculative tale: the marriage of a young man to a tree, an act that ultimately halts the state government’s plan to build a highway through the forest.

Blurring the lines between song, ritual, and fiction, the film becomes a space for participants to reimagine future ecologies and perform their everyday resistance to environmental destruction.

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!