Kameng

The Film

The official film for the Kameng Museum — a project of the Indian Army commemorating India's eastern frontier. It was shot over a month in the forests and border areas of Arunachal Pradesh, and covers the landscape, the strategic significance of the region, and its cultural character.

The Subject

Kameng is the western reach of Arunachal Pradesh, named for the river that runs
through it, rising toward Tawang and the Bhutan and Tibet frontiers. It is
Monpa country, forested and steep, and Tawang Monastery — the largest in India
and the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama — sits at the top of it.

In 1962 this was the Kameng Frontier Division of the North-East Frontier Agency,
and it saw the heaviest fighting of the war with China. The positions at Se La
and Bomdila were the ones the defence of the plains rested on, and their loss
opened the road south. It is also where the Battle of Nuranang was fought, in
which Rifleman Jaswant Singh Rawat of 4 Garhwal Rifles held a position against
repeated assaults and was awarded a posthumous Maha Vir Chakra; the post is
still maintained in his name.

The terrain is the reason the region reads as strategically decisive and the
reason it is so hard to film. Ridgelines run above ten thousand feet, the
approaches are single-road, and weather closes them for parts of the year.

How We Made It

Location filming across the forests and border areas of Arunachal Pradesh, over roughly a month.

Where It Landed

Delivered as the official film for the Kameng Museum.