Skip to main content

REVIEW: FILM SOUTH ASIA '01, Festival of South Asian Documentaries

New Abilities
REVIEW: FILM SOUTH ASIA '01, Festival of South Asian Documentaries

By Sushma Joshi

Nepal is a country known more for its mountains and trekking trips than for its film festivals. You'd imagine that budget travelers would be more likely to be seen downing an apple pie en route to Everest than catching the latest at a documentary festival. But Film South Asia, the film festival of South Asian documentaries, has been drawing an eclectic crowd of residents as well as travelers since its debut in Kathmandu in 1997. The first four-day film festival, held in the cosy new theatres of the Russian Cultural Center in downtown Kathmandu, drew crowds of people for the latest documentaries from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Fifty-five documentaries were shown at the first festival, including Nusrat Has Left the Building, But When? Pakistan's Farzad Nabi's experimental docu-drama, and The Spirit Does Not Come Anymore, the first-ever prize winner by Nepali filmmaker Tsering Rhitar. The works spanned the spectrum, from human rights and activist work to ethnographies and experimental. The FSA traveling film festival, which was organized to bring the films to audiences in North America and Europe, has put documentaries from South Asia on the global circuit.

The concept of independent film production, especially independent documentary, is almost unknown within Nepal. With the exception of a
few isolated cases, filmmakers within the country have concentrated on low-budget Bollywood remakes for commercial consumption. The film festival, which is held every two years, has created a heightened interest in low-budget, independent productions from the subcontinent that has not existed before. Kanak Dixit, who is senior editor and founder of Himal magazine as well as the founder of Film South Asia, attributes the success of the film festival to the fact that it is organized by non-film people like print journalists. "We have been doing serious magazine-length journalism, and documentary
filmmaking comes closest to that, which is probably why we went for it," he says.

India, with the largest film industry in the world, still has no significant festival or movement around independent documentary. While small clusters of activists produce their work within their own communities, these usually do not find the distribution they deserve. Film South Asia has filled this void by providing the subcontinent with a major film festival which has highlighted work on an international level. While the festival has done a lot to open up audience access to independent productions from South Asia, problems still remain.

The festival is dominated by works from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, with a few works from Nepal and Bhutan. Works by women are underrepresented, primarily because women outside the activist circuit do not have the funds to create their own productions. As Kanak Dixit concludes: "We need to consider why more documentaries are not being made, and look at the real challenge of expanding the audience for the documentary all over."


Film South Asia [www.himalassociation.org/fsa] accepts applications from South Asian filmmakers and filmmakers of South Asian descent from around the world. The next festival is being held Oct. 4-7 in
Kathmandu, Nepal. Submission deadline: June 30.


From www.docs-in-progress.com (now offline)

Popular posts from this blog

Supportive Men: the documentary

In Nepal, men and women are involved in various ways to shift norms and relationships toward gender equality. This documentary focuses on one community in Kapilvastu, Southern Nepal, to show how men and couples are changing the way they interact with one another to bring about social change, and also how men are supporting women’s movement for empowerment and gender equality.   _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Mr. Dube is a young man in his late twenties who lives in Kapilvastu, Nepal. He has taken part in a gender equality training given by a local NGO, in partnership with an INGO. He is married and has two sons. In his small community, Mr. Dube has become an inspirational figure who has managed to change the behavior of not just the younger men, but also the older men of his community, who now cook, help with housework and childcare, and support  their spouses in a way that was unthinkable...
Read more

WATER shown in eco-feminism week in Trinity College, Dublin

Isabel Jorgensen invited me to screen WATER at the eco-feminism week (Nov 13-17, 2017) at Trinity College, Dublin. She said she'd seen me present at Oxford University's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and thought the film fitted perfectly with the theme of the week. I was already back in Nepal after a summer in Oxford, so I suggested that she present it instead. Isabel said the documentary would be screened at the Museum Building Library, and that "it was by far the most beautiful building and room on campus!" So I googled it up, and indeed, here is the beautiful building .  It was inspired by the Byzantine architecture of Venice. Here is her email after the event, after I asked her how it went: Amazing, thanks! Here are some pictures from the event, it went smoothly and there was a lot of good discussion. I gave a 30 minute intro to climate justice and environmental issues and women’s roles in their resolution, we had the a screening an...
Read more

Hubert Bals Fund grant

I received a seed grant from the Hubert Bals Fund to write a fiction film script in 1997.  The grant gave me support and inspiration when I needed it the most. I found  this list of HBF grantees  on the web, and am honored to be part of this global film community.
Read more