Minket Lepcha

Minket Lepcha has been engaged with documenting stories and folklore based on ethnic communities of Darjeeling and Sikkim for few years. She got an opportunity to direct a film on River Teesta through SOPPECOM and traced the river from the source till the river leaves the mountain. She documented many communities along the river. She was also engaged in teaching for 4 years, she experienced massive gap between the education system and ground reality after her film experience. The lack of opportunity to educate local and traditional knowledge to the young generation was a concern. Having always been inspired by Lepcha folklore and believing that the ecological widsom are hidden in these stories, she has created a workshop based on the folklore of Himalayan Communities especially Lepcha folklore. She uses this workshop tool to inspire, influence and educate young minds to connect with river and mountains and provide an experiential learning towards their surrounding rivers and mountains. She has been travelling for the past 2 years narrating stories of river, seeds, birds, mystical creatures to school and college students across India and Nepal. She wishes to disseminate this data collected during the workshop in a form of a film or a blog in future. Besides that, she is associated with various social work around Darjeeling and Sikkim region concerning environment like Sustainable Development Goals workshops, Free River Flowing campaign organized by Internationalrivers and ACT, supporting local farmers and artisans.
She is an awardee of Young Green Filmmaker 2016 in Woodpecker International Film Festival for her film ‘Voices of Teesta’. This film also earned 10th position amongst 110 films in World Water Forum in Brazil 2018.