Nani Ma

Musamoni Panigrahi 1920s2017 fondly called Nani Ma by her neighbours appears in the centre of this first film in the Baleswari dialect of Indias Odia language The story revolves around folklore and folk songs narrated by Nani Ma Born in the 1920s in preindependent rural India in a coastal village in the Balasore district of Odisha she never got to go beyond the first few days of school The film is an alternate history of a society broken through colonization Brahminical patriarchy and a postfamine Orissa famine of 1866 killing nearly 5 million people onethird of the population and the dominance of formal writing over spoken tongues Three academics Damayanti Beshra PhD recipient of Indias fourth civilian award Padma Shri Panchanan Mohanty PhD noted linguist and Laxmikanta Tripathy PhD DLitt anthropologist and author also appear in the film to provide contextual commentary on patriarchy oral history and the sociolinguistic diversity