'I am Belmaya' tells the tale of a Nepali woman courageously challenging patriarchy through film

Upper West Side NY

17 March, 2022

4:05 PM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY LAURA JIANG MARCH 16, 2022 "You're always coming with a brain full of cow dung." After receiving such comments from her teachers, Belmaya Nepali, a young girl living in Nepal, quit school at an early age. She found herself living the role of many other young Dalit woman—working in the field and breaking stones for a living while facing social pressure to marry young and seek security through a husband. Years later, when she found herself trapped in an abusive marriage and caring for a young daughter, her biggest regret was giving up on her education. When GlobalGirl Media UK presented her with the opportunity to study filmmaking, she knew it was her chance to change her story. Five years later, her first short film, "Educate our Daughters," turned Nepali's regret into a powerful message. "I am Belmaya" tells Nepali's story, following her from the first time she picked up a camera to attending her first international film festival. Co-directed by Nepali and filmmaker Sue Carpenter, "I am Belmaya" made its New York state premiere at the 12th annual Athena Film Festival on March 12. Carpenter met Nepali at a girls' home in Pokhara on a visiting trip—a place Nepali escaped to at the age of 12. She was the first person to put a camera in Nepali's hands. However, the girls' home locked away the cameras after Carpenter left. Eight years later, Carpenter and Nepali reunited, and Nepali had a second chance to pick up the camera. Carpenter spent the next five years documenting Nepali's process training in filmmaking. The documentary's limited use of production devices gives a raw, stirring look into Nepali's empowering story. It utilizes Nepali's short films and footage filmed from Carpenter's perspective to chronicle her journey, and an overlay of a recording frame is edited onto the footage taken by Nepali during her training process to distinguish it from the shots of Nepali in action taken for the documentary. Otherwise, the documentary is minimal in its use of captioning and visual devices. Other than the subtitles, the only words that appear on the screen are the names of new speakers. Without any captioning to establish a timeline, it is occasionally confusing for a viewer to determine how much time has passed between two frames. Nepali's daughter Bipana, who has been by her mother's side from Nepali's first filmmaking class to her first film festival, often serves as a visual marker of time passing. Occasionally, Nepali's conversations also serve as a time stamp. When Nepali talks to her best friend Devi, she shares that it has been one and half years since her film training began. The confusion surrounding the timeline limits viewers' ability to grasp Nepali's story in its fullest form. This is particularly consequential in the film's portrayal of Nepali's abusive marriage with her husband Biren. The relationship's fluctuation and the way it hinders Nepali's artistic progress throughout the years is made more ambiguous due to the lack of time stamps. In the film, her husband refuses to acknowledge Bipana as his daughter because of his hopes for a son. He also disapproves of Nepali's filmmaking training, leading him to physically attack Nepali after accusing her of stealing. This was the breaking point of their relationship, and in seeking a divorce, Nepali faces resistance from both her husband and the police which causes the proceedings to fall through. Her husband's subsequent change in behavior, shown through shots of him washing the dishes and helping Bipana with her homework, is tempered by his persistent disapproval with her career. Even after Nepali's short films make it to her first national film festival, Biren still complains that she did not mention him during her speech and frowns at a newspaper advertising her work. When the frame shifts, Nepali states that it is just her and her daughter now, and viewers are left questioning what happened to the marriage and how Nepali finally managed to divorce her husband. The documentary does not try to fill in these missing details through extra narration. Perhaps a benefit of this choice is its ability to engage the viewer's narrative imagination. Giving the viewer the privilege to take peeks into Nepali's life also pushes them to put in active effort to parse out the timeline of her story. The directors created a film unpolluted by jarring informational screens and instead provided information in natural ways. For example, Nepali comments on the physical violence she experienced in the girls' home through a conversation with her filmmaking classmate Ajay. At a group discussion at a film workshop, she talks about the abuse she experienced from the doctor present when she gave birth. Compared to the parts of the documentary where Nepali narrates her life over a montage of thematic clips set to music, these organic moments of Nepali sharing her story create a more lasting emotional impact. This documentary is unique because Nepali, the co-director, is also the film's titular subject. Many biographical documentaries about individual women have been made in recent years, such as "He Named Me Malala" and "I am Greta." "I am Belmaya" gains a unique intimacy from its autobiographical touch. When "Educate our Daughters" made its public premiere at the 2017 Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival, a viewer commented on the power the film holds by having a filmmaker from the same background as the people being filmed. Another viewer asked Nepali how filmmaking has changed her. "Now, I only focus on how to move forward," she responded. In the last shot of the documentary, viewers see Nepali posing with a camera at the top of a mountain—symbolic of her success story as a filmmaker. But that shot, perhaps the only staged shot in the film, does not embody her inextinguishable drive to move forward as effectively as the candid shots of her smiles during lessons on how to set up a tripod and her tears during the international premiere of "Educate our Daughters" at the 21st United Kingdom Asian Film Festival in London. "I am Belmaya" shows that powerful stories need no extra fluff or production devices. Belmaya Nepali's story, in its rawest form, speaks for itself. Staff writer Laura Jiang can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.