Digital Desk: Bholaguri Tea Estate is where assamese cinema was born. This was where the reel Joymoti was bound and tortured and killed.
In 1933, Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla converted the factory of the Bholaguri Tea Estate factory near Gohpur into a film studio and produced the first Assamese feature film Joymoti. He set up a makeshift studio called Chitrabon Studio in the tea garden, complete with bamboo, cane, wood, banana trees, thatch, and other materials, and began filming in and around the factory.
The name Chitrabon, was later in fact used by the state's only film studio Jyoti Chitrabon, located in Guwahati.
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Joymoti was released on March 10 1935, and his second film Indramalati was released in 1939.
It may be recalled that Bholaguri tea Estate was neglected over time. Still, on January 17, 2017, the then Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal inaugurated the arrangements to install a statue of Rupkonwar Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla Dev at the screening site.
A museum is also being planned to set up to preserve all the types of equipment used by him during the making of the film. In addition, the construction of a wall along the boundary of the pond in the "Jyoti Udyan" is being done now.
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