Five Assamese Critics Earn Spots in National Film Journal

Guwahati: Five film critics from Assam have broken through to the national stage. Their work appears in the July to September 2026 edition of E-CineIndia, the peer-reviewed quarterly journal published by FIPRESCI India. The issue, Vol. XXXI, contains 39 entries in total. It carries the weight of the International Federation of Film Critics, a body founded in 1992 by Chidananda Dasgupta and Aruna Vasudev.

Journal editor Premendra Mazumder oversees the publication. The board includes scholars like M.K. Raghavendra. Kaushik Nath represents Assam in the Critique section. He wrote "The Architecture of Family Conflict in Sentimental Value," a piece analyzing the Grand Prix winner from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Nath explores the decaying estate in the film as a structure of resentment. He argues that the house itself represents memory.

Dr. Pranjal Borah, a FIPRESCI member based in Jorhat, explores posthuman aesthetics in North East Indian cinema through ecology and the senses. Manoj Barpujari focuses on Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzman. Dr. Dipsikha Bhagawati, a teacher at Dawson Higher Secondary and Multipurpose School in Nagaon, challenges the typical image of Bengali actor Uttam Kumar. She argues his screen persona was "more tender and complicated than the label of a conventional hero allows."

Bishal Das, a research scholar at Tezpur University, rounds out the group with a feminist analysis of Assamese film. The journal is registered under ISSN 2582-2500 and is available online. These contributions prove that local critics are moving beyond old styles of regional exoticism. They are now engaging with global and domestic works on equal ground. A film culture needs writers to survive. Without critical voices, many works simply vanish into the margins.