A keening cry of melancholy seems to seep out of Kalo Pothi, filmmaker Min Bahadur Bham’s debut feature. It is not just a cry of sorrow for the two adolescents who are the focal figures in the movie, but of the whole generation that struggles to eke out a living in Karnali. Set in the far-flung district of Mugu—its humanity maimed by the 10-year long insurgency—Kalo Pothi narrates a world with the friendship between its two central characters as the vehicle. It is a world all too vivid for auteur Bham—he was born and raised in the very region the film has been shot. In this interview, Bham—an engaged, effusive presence—sat down with the Post’s Timothy Aryal to talk about the movie and his love for the art of cinema. Excerpts:

How do you, as someone born and raised in the Karnali, recall the the Maoist insurgency at its peak?

In Karnali, the lives of its residents are very monotonous; it is the same routine every day. I was a child when the insurgency was taking place and that left an indelible mark on me. The despair and desperation the insurgency caused has been seared into my memory.

How was the idea to film Kalo Pothi conceived?

I released anguish through it—a keen anguish that was coiled deep inside me. As one who always wanted to be a storyteller, I thought it was a story that I should tell. I wrote the draft of the script, discussed it with my friends and then the film was conceived.

I can sense that there were more than a few challenges when shooting the movie in a location as far-flung as Karnali; can you tell us about the process of the shooting the movie, the screening of actors and the likes?

As the story needed to be told through characters that were born and raised in Karnali, we build our cast out of mostly non-actors. Regarding the two young actors, I went deep inside their psyche and lived with them for about two months—through which I came to know what would make the characters happy and what would make them cry. The actors were chosen from an audition involving hundreds of others. We then gave them intense courses, which helped them get familiar with the camera lenses.

Is there any particular reason why you chose to tell the story through the eyes of two innocent kids?

We worked on how we could capture the real-life scenario of the setting by building with the tale of friendship. And the film involves a lot of far-range scenes; there are no close-ups. That is an attempt to not plague the movie with too much of emotional intensity. We wanted to tell a story and also to make the viewer realise that they are watching a fictional story, to not get them too carried away.

Kalo Pothi reminded me of Andrei Tarkovsky’s debut, Ivan’s Childhood, also a war-themed movie. Would you say you were inspired by it?

Well, I have a huge respect for Tarkovsky, and the whole European filmmaking. Tarkovsky is more than just a filmmaker; we all look up to him. But it is not that I tried to emulate Tarkovsky; the world Tarkovsky lived in and the world I lived in are quite different. There are dream sequences in both the films, but that could mean very different things, given the incongruity of the context between the two. But you could say that the movie embodies some influences from the European style of filming.

How were you bitten by the cinema bug?

My father used to work at the telecom in Mugu. The only means of communication back then was telegram. I was the one who would write the messages for villagers and I would do it very concisely—with telegram, the fewer the words the better. So I started out with storytelling by writing. I was always looking to find a way out for suppressed emotions.

I watched my first film at the age of four or five. Films by Mithun, Rajesh Hamal and Shiva Shrestha were staples back then. As I was growing up, all of my friends wanted to be heroes, while that was the least of my concern. I wanted to be the one who tells the story and one who governs the heroes. As if in a moment of epiphany, I was already smitten with the visual medium.  

Kalo Pothi has won several accolades and is expected to put Nepali cinema on the map. Let’s take a peek at the larger picture of Nepali filmmaking here—how do you see Nepali filmmaking as of today?

We are all chasing after illusions.

I am obviously not intending to criticise or accuse anyone, but truth be told, what Nepali filmmakers tend to sell to the audiences is the retelling of the Nepali dream—a handsome boy, a handsome girl, handsome wealth. The audience with such dreams gets carried away by the two hours of fantasy that the films depict. That approach is not going to lead us anywhere. But there are some rays of hope. Lately, films like Highway and Mukhundo are a welcome sign.

What will be your next project?

I am working on a script right now. The film will be set in the Himalayas and will touch upon the topic of spirituality. We hope to release it by 2020.