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The colour of democracy
JUN 23 -
The film begins with a simple statement: ‘My father says democracy is blue, a colour of freedom.’ It goes on to narrate how different members of a family interpret the word democracy and identify it with a particular colour, and in the end, all the colours merge—thus creating the title for the film: Democracy is Black.
The minute-and-a-half long film is the brainchild of Anup Poudel, the winner of this year’s Democracy Video Challenge, which is organised by the US government. This short film has thrown Poudel into the limelight, but his filmmaking career had begun long before this.
The current president of Manhattan Short Film Festival for Kathmandu, Poudel had always been passionate about filmmaking. “I used to visualise a story every time I read literature or poetry,” he says. Poudel remembers the dramas he had directed in school. Previously a student at the National Institute of Science and Technology, Poudel always had a knack for filmmaking, and finally abandoned his engineering degree course for film studies with support from his brother Abinash. “I had ideas; he had technology,” he says.
Poudel’s film on democracy was one of the two finalists from the South and Central Asian region. The short film is set in a science lab and various scientific apparatuses are used to prove the point. But that’s not because of Poudel’s science background. Instead, he wanted to define a social idea like democracy through the use of scientific tools. “The flasks I use are not full because in a democracy, fluctuations are inevitable,” he explains. “Unity and peace are not absolute ideas but instead evolve and are shaped by changing times.”
The winners were announced according to the number of votes received on YouTube. Poudel initially had lesser viewers than the other finalist from Pakistan. “However, I was quite confident that I will make it to the final round,” he says, “because I believed my video was inclusive of views of people around the world.”
Democracy is Black isn’t Poudel’s first venture. Earlier, his debut documentary My Green Home was short-listed in a competition organised by the British Council, and was screened at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival. The film also won the first prize in the Climate Change Video Competition conducted by Asian Development Bank.
Poudel’s inspirations for the democracy film are all personal, yet his father’s participation in Nepal’s democratic movements certainly helped. Still, at first, his family did not warm up to the idea of him becoming a filmmaker. “Our society does not think of film as an art,” says Poudel, “There is always a negative perception underlying the opinion of people regarding the film industry. I personally think this has more to do with
the lack of aesthetic dimension in Nepali films.”
Poudel speaks of the influences he had from French films. “French movies are intellectual, informative and artistic. They have a ritual of filmmaking which adds to the cinematic beauty in their works,” Poudel says, who idolises Jean Luc Godard. Poudel himself envisages a project aimed at portraying the issues regarding superstitions and the evils associated with them.
Poudel’s current feat has come as a greater achievement. The response to his success has been very encouraging to his efforts. “This has even brought me closer to my family,” says Poudel. His determination to commit his life to the film industry is further emboldened by this recent success.
Still, he is immensely disappointed with the pathetic condition of the Nepali film industry and the support it receives from the general public.
“The industry requires more skilled and educated individuals,” he says, “we need more films with universal appeal.”
Posted on: 2010-06-24 08:19
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