All the seats inside the City Hall auditorium were taken; the show was “House Full.” But people were still coming in despite volunteers warning them of lack of seats and busy settling the additional visitors on the stairs and aisles, some of them adjusting themselves on the armrests of chairs while some perched on broken chair frames.
It was the noontime show on the third day of the Kathmandu Mountain Film festival (KIMFF), and the festival was showcasing short fiction films, “Extinct,” “Hari” and “Bansuli” made by young Nepali filmmakers, and the audiences were responding well to the scenes of the films, falling into endless laughter in the comic scenes, sympathizing with the characters in their hard times and appreciating every movie with a loud applause when it ended.[break]
“It’s so encouraging to get such reaction from the audiences,” says Asim Chitrakar, the director of the film “Hari” which won the Best Fiction Film Award under the Nepal Panorama category in the festival.
Chitrakar’s 12-minute film was an amateur production which the filmmaker said was part of his credit course for his graduate program at Oscar College of Film Studies. Nevertheless, it didn’t fail to impress the audience or the judges at KIMFF.
“Short films help filmmakers to explore their creativity without getting much worried about the budget,” he says about his involvement with short films.
Bhaswor Ojha
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a professional honorary organization which also hosts the Academy Awards informally known as Oscars, defines a short film as “an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits.”
In general, short films are those films that aren’t long enough to fall into the category of feature films.
Anup Poudel, another filmmaker who had won the Democracy Video Challenge in 2010 for his short film “Democracy is Black,” says that short films are the medium for the beginners to build up their skills.
“A filmmaker can experiment as much as he likes in short films. Feature films, however, require a certain amount of budget, and experimentation will have greater risks,” he says.
Poudel has already produced more than 20 short films, of which about nine have won various national and international competition awards. He was also part of the team of the short film “Bansuli” which was selected to be screened at the 69th Venice Film Festival.
Selection of Nepali short films for international competitions and festivals has also encouraged young filmmakers to attempt directing them. But generally, low budgeted short films don’t have conventional outlets like feature length films. Many short films are released on Youtube but it’s only film festivals where filmmakers can showcase their works to mass audiences.
A short film, however, can have impacts just as a feature-length film if it’s told well, according to Tsering Choden, a filmmaker who was also a winner of the “Democracy is” video challenge in 2009.
“Short films can be considered as a stepping stone as they are easier to attempt, in the sense it’s in a smaller scale. However, you still require a good story, screenplay, cast, crew, logistics, budget, everything, and therefore, as challenging to make,” adds Choden who is the assistant director of the upcoming feature film, Uma.
Khitiz Shrestha, another young filmmaker whose short film “Mukti” had entered the top five in the BBC MyWorld Competition from Asia in 2010, says that it’s the advancement of technology that has encouraged many young people to try short filmmaking.
“Everyone owns a camera these days and people attempt to make short films with the help of a group of friends,” he says. However, Shrestha adds that short films trend isn’t a new one in Nepal.
“Veteran actors like Madan Krishna Shrestha, Hari Bansa Acharya, Santosh Pant have acted and produced many short films. These used to air on Nepal Television,” he says. He himself is producing 13 episodes on short films show for a national television.
Short films are generally regarded as a practice to produce feature films by many filmmakers. But Shrestha and Choden believe that short filmmaking can go beyond just a practice phase.
“If you can tell a story in 10 minutes, why extend it to a two-hour film?” says Shrestha, adding, “There are short films that were made with budgets of millions and after five years of hard work.”
But raising funds is a big question for short filmmakers in Nepal. “Television was a productive platform back then when we had only one television channel. That way, filmmakers could survive by producing short films,” he says.
He adds that though there are many television channels now, they cannot support short filmmakers because television business itself is not in a good shape.
Subina Shrestha, Al Jazeera correspondent and a filmmaker, suggests that young filmmakers look out for crowd funding.
“Money is a big question when you’re venturing into filmmaking. There are certain funded projects that provide grants to filmmakers but everyone will be eying the same thing,” she said in a discussion program during KIMFF.
Though filmmakers agreed that crowd funding, the method of pooling money through collective effort by individuals, can be a good technique, it’s the passion that’ll motivate production of any films. Short filmmakers need more patience as they aren’t commercially viable like feature films.
“Short films can be very short for conventional filmgoers. However, add a little creativity and it could draw audiences to the theatres, thus making it commercially viable. As examples, there are films like I love NY, Paris, Je t’aime, and Dus Kahaniyaan in which you get a collection of short films under the same/similar theme,” says Choden.
Khitiz Shrestha, on the other hand, says that different short films can be screened for feature-length durations to attract audiences. He says that Eka Deshma, a film festival held last October, exemplified that such trend can also be a good option to make short films saleable.
Nowadays, there are many short films that are produced by film students. With Tribhuvan University affiliated Oscar College of Film Studies, Grassroots Film Making Training and other filmmaking trainings organized by different NGOs, students of such programs produce short films as part of their credit courses.
Internationally, short films aren’t commercially successful, and the same is true in Nepal. But young Nepali filmmakers are hopeful that they can create interest among the audience and consequently create a market for short films, too. Audience participation at film festivals surely demonstrates its interest, and short films by young filmmakers are exhibiting their promise in the field.
Telling the tales Of me, of people like me
Sunita Nepali didn’t even know what the meaning of documentary was when she started filmmaking training with Grassroots Film Making Training (GFMT) in 2011. When she was selected among five filmmakers who were to be trained under filmmaker and scriptwriter Rajesh Gongaju, she had very little idea about of what she was getting into.
But after nine months of training, she, along with her friends Bina Sunuwar, and Bindu BK, came with a documentary, “Kahile samma?” (Until When?), which explored the problems arising from inter-caste marriages in the Dalit communities of Parbat District. “Until When?” was also screened at the recent 10th Kathmandu Mountain Film festival (KIMFF).
The 24-years old filmmaker was also a character in the documentary. It follows her own experiences regarding her affair with a Chhetri man who left her for another woman of his caste. By then, she was already pregnant with his child. But even after her son was six years old, her husband’s family refused to take her into the family.
The Week talked to Nepali about her experiences and her future ventures.
Tell us about your experience about the filmmaking training and making of “Until When?”
I was called to attend an interview by Aatmanirbhar Bikas Manch, the organization that also looked after my court case against my husband’s family. After I was selected, I stayed in a hostel at Ranipauwa, Pokhara, for nine months.
In the beginning, I had a very hard time learning to use cameras and computers. Nevertheless, we completed documentary making in one and a half years.
How did you bring out your own story in the documentary?
After I shared my past and problems with my friends, we decided to work on the subject of inter-caste marriage. I decided to bring my story in the open because I wanted people to know about the unjust social structure and with a hope that people may change their mind after watching this video.
What kind of reactions did the documentary get?
The documentary has been screened only in urban areas till now, and so far, people have had encouraging things to tell me. Some people ask me if I recommend inter-caste marriages after going through all the pains and sufferings. There were some people who asked me if there was any change in society’s perception of me.
But we have yet to screen the documentary in villages because that’s where the core problem lies. I have little hope that the perception of society will change overnight even after they watch the video. But I hope that there will be a beginning.
What are you involved in these days?
It’s been eight years since I moved to Pokhara. Nowadays, I paint houses to earn my living and I’m also training new students in documentary making in the same centre where I received my training. There were talks of a fulltime job for me at the training centre but nothing’s fixed yet.
What are your future plans?
Rajesh (Gongaju) Sir has told us to look for subject matters in which we can attempt our next documentary. We’re looking for topics that have affected people in the villages, as we can understand the core problem. Since we’ve already worked in one documentary, I have the confidence to go to people and ask them to cooperate.
I think that since we’ve learnt this skill with such hard work, we should continue it further.
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