Imagi Ningthem (1981)

The breakthrough film of Manipur’s best- known director, made in collaboration with the writer and art patron maharajkumari M.K. Binodini Debi (they collaborated again on Ishanou, 1990). The sensitive schoolteacher Dhani helps Thoithoi, the illegitimate son of Dinachandra, to be adopted by Dinachandra’s legitimate wife Ekashini. The legal aspects of the child’s adoption are intercut with the child’s growth, presented with mythological overtones (e.g. Thoi Thoi plays the infant Krishna in the folk Raas-Leela).