Enlightenment in animation
Anyone with any degree of interest in Nepali films will certainly have heard of filmmaker Tulsi Ghimire. Having been responsible for many of Nepali cinema’s early hits like Kusume Rumaal, Lahure, Chino, Dakshina, Balidaan and Darpan Chhaya, Ghimire has been an industry stalwart for several decades. And now, after having put his name to many a mainstream film, he’s ready to take a pioneering leap: making Nepal’s first full-length animated feature film.
The film is titled Siddhartha Gautam and is based on the life of Gautam Buddha. “Since this was our first attempt at animation, we couldn’t think of anything better or more auspicious than putting up a graphic visualisation of Buddha’s life,” Ghimire says. “Nepal is, after all, his birthplace,” he adds.
Animated feature films have proved a staple in Hollywood, where a number of computer-animated features reign at the box office at any given time. This is a trend that we’ve seen slowly creeping into Bollywood as well of late, with the emergence of films like Hanuman, Roadside Romeo and Jumbo, to name a few. Nepal, however, has been a bit slow on the uptake apart from a recent budding of interest in that direction, culminating in smaller efforts such as the animated shorts that were screened at the One Film 3D Animation Challenge 2011 organised by Maya Animation Academy. These modest endeavours aside, however, Ghimire’s venture is the only major attempt so far in bringing animation in Nepal to the big screen.
The filmmaker tells us that the first phase of Siddhartha Gautam is now complete, thanks to the efforts of a team of animators—numbering in the hundreds—from the Yeti Digital Studio (under Midas) who put hours and hours of work into the production. Dialogues have already been recorded , and the music has been finalised under the collaboration of poet Madhav Prasad Ghimire and veteran singer Amber Gurung, but the film has been stalled for some time now. Ghimire says production isn’t expected to resume until April and that it will be another two years before it is complete. “This is a subject we feel very strongly about and one that could be very controversial if done wrong,” explains Ghimire. “We wanted more thorough research before proceeding any further.” Experts from India and Canada have now been added to the production team to aide with the development of the story. “Our animators have done a fantastic job so far,” Ghimire says, eager to dispel the idea that the reason for the hiatus was owing to insufficient domestic talent. “It was only in the process of making this film that I discovered how skilled animators in Nepal really are. But our entire team is striving to ensure we have a product that is of international standards, to get all the smallest of gestures and movements correct, which is why we wanted to get some outside help with the project.”
Besides being the first Nepali animated feature, Siddhartha Gautam, produced by Midas Entertainment, also chalks up a record-breaking budget of Rs 200 million, a figure yet unheard of in the film industry. The 120-minute film, once complete, will see a global release in more than 14 languages. “The release will be an excellent opportunity to introduce world audiences to Nepali films.” Ghimire says he hopes it will not only mean exposure for his film, but for the local film industry in general.
As to the question of why he chose animation as the medium to depict Buddha’s life, Ghimire says it would’ve been impossible to find an actor who could’ve done justice to Buddha’s persona, and CGI offered a much easier way of depicting the kind of visuals that were required without having to rely on picking a real life match. “A graphic representation just seemed like a better idea,” Ghimire says.
Research for the film has certainly been intense, as is warranted by such a project. Ghimire and Chhatra Hari Karki, Managing Director of Midas Group, worked hard for an extended period of time to procure accurate information on Buddha’s life for a more authentic result. “The film is going to be ‘factual’ so to speak, rather than religious,” Ghimire says. “We read a number of books on his life, which was also when we realised that there is comparatively little written about him before he achieved enlightenment…It wasn’t easy finding what we did.” He adds that it was particularly difficult to locate books written in the Nepali language. “We found plenty of Hindi, English, and Sinhala books though,” he says. It was ultimately with the help of chief archeologist Basanta Bidari—and following some interaction with the Lamas from local monasteries—that Ghimire and Karki were able to acquire the necessary information to compile the script.
Siddhartha Gautam is clearly representative of changes—big and small—that are making inroads into the Nepali film industry, a reworking of mindsets and old school presumptions about what is commercially viable. While younger directors are already showing a lot of initiative in taking risks with projects, it is an even more encouraging sign to see this sort of willingness to try new things in someone like Ghimire, who has spent most of his life in the cinema fraternity and who should have, by all means, been resigned to the status quo. “Taking up something like this, something entirely new to me and to audiences, is an interesting study, both in terms of the process and techniques of filmmaking and an introspection into my own ideas about the medium,” Ghimire says. “I’m learning more every day.”
Posted on: 2012-02-04 10:31
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