Gyani Maiya

Dec 10, 2019

0h 25m

★ 10.0

No community can express the pain of losing an elder, especially when one was presumed to be the last fluent speaker of their language and the language is nearing endangerment.

Overview

“We left our language and started speaking others’. The girls have got married and have left for the villages. Boys are getting married in villages. It should be taught to children”. — Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda The Gi Mihaq (also known as Kusunda) was a semi-nomadic hunter and gatherer community that settled in villages around the mid-western Nepalese district of Dang. They have long lost their native language Mihaq (Kusunda), to acculturation and other barriers to active use. The community also lost their 83-year-old elder Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda in 2020, the most and the only known fluent Kusunda speaker then. Filmed in Kulmor in the Dang District in 2018, this openly-licensed documentary is a memoir of Sen-Kusunda in her own words and a biography of her people who were forced to leave their language and cultural identity. Kusunda is being revived by Kamala Sen Khatri, Sen-Kusunda’s younger sister, and Uday Raj Aaley, a local researcher who is the key interviewer for this film.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

O Foundation

Gyani Maiya Trailers

Cast

Self

Gyani Maiya Sen Kusunda

Self

Uday Raj Aaley

Self

Sanjib Chaudhary

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Gyani Maiya

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Gyani Maiya Trailers