Vhando is a fiction short that deals with the psychological representation of the poor Bhime, who in his course of work feels his identity to be nothing except the non-living pot.
Set in the beautiful valley of Manang that borders Tibet, The Last Race explores the friendship between two boys, Karma and Lakpa. Thirteen-year-old Laka was left by his parents in Manang with a drunken uncle. His dream was to join his father in America. But he wants his friend Karma to join him. But all that Karma wants is to win the annual Yarthung horse race.
In Three Years is an innovative documentary film that centres on the correspondence between Bikash and his father. Bikash is fourteen years old and lives with his two younger siblings, mother, grandmother and relatives in the suburbs of Kathmandu. His father lives in the US and has not returned to Nepal since he left. Bikash has been recording video of himself and his family and sending it to his father for the past three years. Focusing on a suburban middle class Hindu family, the film also brings forth the rapidly changing landscapes as Bikash comes of age.
Sherpas The True Heroes of Mount Everest focuses on the hired Sherpas of a Swiss Everest Expedition Team. Among the Sherpas is Dawa, who has accented the Everest summit thirteen times. The film heroically showcases the role of Sherpas who make it possible for the big-pocketed Western climbers to reach the summit. Among other revelations, the film chronicles the Sherpas as they get stuck in climbers’ jam as over 50 expedition teams are vying for the summit, and all the while they fight against altitude sickness to appease their clients.
The Struggle Within is a documentary that follows gay, lesbian, bi and transgender youths in Kathmandu as they prepare for Mr. Pink, an upcoming pageant. It follows the stories of the discrimination that the youth have faced whether it was in the Nepali Army, the Maoist Army or in their own homes.
The Rat Hunters is a documentary film that reflects the lifestyle of rat hunting community from South Asia called “Mushahar.” The film follows a five daylong bamboo-trading journey on ancient oxen cart in Southern plains of Nepal bordering India. The film centres on Bikon Saday, a sixty years old Mushar man who lives with his family of five. He earns a meagre wage by working for his landlord as a bonded labour, a heinous tradition that passes on from a generation to the next.
Pooja is a fiction film that takes place in a village nearby the city of Dharan in eastern Nepal. The film centres around two teenagers, Pooja who comes from a Thakuri clan and a boy who comes from a Rai clan. Pooja is never treated well by her mother, as girls are not given equality in traditional family households. The boy on the other hand has family pressures to go to Hong Kong for remittance. This beautifully shot film poignantly narrates a story of love and of death within a society where traditional values such as caste hierarchies are in constant collision with changing times.
In Search of Riyal is the first documentary of Kesang Tseten’s trilogy on Nepali migrant workers in the Arabian Gulf. Nepal has become a pipeline of cheap labour for the Gulf, emptying villages of its young men, who set out to escape their family woes and poverty for wages of US $5 to 7 a day in the alien and stultifying conditions of the Qatari desert. Disillusionment and occasional transformation convey the enormity of their journey.
Forgive! Forget Not! is considered to be one of the landmarks in Nepali documentary filmmaking for successfully experimenting with the syntax and content of film form. Narrated by a Nepalese journalist Bhaikaji Ghimire, who was illegally detained (in blindfold) inside Kathmandu’s infamous Bhairavnath barracks for 15 months. It provides a mirror to the terrible times during the “People’s War” and the state’s reaction to the Maoist insurgency. The film helps clear the way for a peaceful future by confronting the recent past.
