Arambam Samarendra

Matamgi Manipur is the first full-length Manipuri feature film released in the year 1972. The film narrates the story of a middle class family which has votaries of the new and old values in society. They drift in different directions pulled by their diametrically opposite attitudes.

The film Leipaklei tells the story of Leipaklei, a woman named after a Manipuri flower. Like the flower whose habitat is the hard ground, she is surrounded by hard trials and ironies of fate: separation from the one who loved and is still loved by her, abandonment by her husband, the trials of being a single parent, the violence of the gaze of men who sees her as fair game. Not unlike the flower Leipaklei, which hibernates beneath parched grounds - dreaming for a spring past, the protagonist dreams of the return of her beloved. He returns.