Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya on Saturday organised another chapter of its popular series, Museum Popular lecture where Cécile Guillaume-Pey from Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Anthropologie du Contemporain (EHESS, CNRS, Paris) spoke on ‘From ritual images to animated movies- The Transformative Journey of Saora Paintings’.
The lecture was chaired by Prof Sarit Kumar Chaudhuri (Director, IGRMS) and chief guest was Prof PK Panigrahi (Professor, Department of Political Science, Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar).
In the beginning, Cécile Guillaume-Pey introduced herself as Postdoctoral research associate at the Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Anthropologie du Contemporain (EHESS, CNRS, Paris). She obtained her PhD in social anthropology from EHESS (CAS-lISST, Toulouse) based on fieldwork in Andhra Pradesh, her dissertation focuses on the contemporary transformations of the ritual practices of the Saora tribe.
She has been researching on tribes of India from past 11 years and had spent considerable amount of time in the tribal belts of Orissa - Andhra Pradesh and learnt to speak Saora language.
Prior to her lecture, Guillaume-Pey screened to animated short films based on Saora paintings. Surya Shankar Dash, an Odia activist-filmmaker, has used patterns of Saora paintings to denounce the implantation of mining companies in tribal areas. His animated movie, called Shot dead for development, is a vibrant homage to the tribal men, women, and children who resisted mining and industrial activities in their homeland.
leslie Mackenzie, cartoonist and director of West Highland Animation, her animated movie, called Kenkentid – meaning “Bird Song” in the Saora language – invites us to travel inside a Saora painting which has become animated, the medium of the narration.