I Am Belmaya

https://vimeo.com/349428192?fbclid=IwAR3HiMAvUGZMQEpDq3i5mbRtfhqrGpJu38IdenLW7o2VTm8RkjMfN-H9TKg

When Belmaya Nepali undertook her first public speaking engagement, at the WOW (Women of the World) Festival in Kathmandu in January 2018, she had said: “I feel proud because, despite coming from a Dalit family, where I was discriminated against in my own village, I have come so far today.” 

In the year since, Belmaya has come further than she could ever have imagined. Fresh from speaking at WOW Madhes in Janakpur last week, the film I Am Belmaya of which she is the subject and co-director will be shown at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF) on 14 December.

The sixth and youngest child of a poor family, Belmaya was orphaned aged nine. She missed her early schooling, ending up in a girls’ home in Pokhara. That is where I met her in 2006 when I led a photo project to encourage self-expression. Belmaya, then 13, used to eagerly grab the camera. She wanted to be a photographer, she said, to expose injustice.

Just as Belmaya loved the camera, the camera loved her. Unlike many of her friends who adopted the sweet submissive front expected of adolescent girls, Belmaya couldn’t conceal her feelings. I amassed a trove of footage that revealed her fiery spirit, her spiky humour, her joy when dancing, her vulnerability the day she started menstruating.

My videotapes stayed on my shelf, niggling away at me to be used in a film that would shine a light on the reality of life for so many girls and women in Nepal. It was not until 2014 that I returned to Nepal and tracked down Belmaya -- dismayed to find the youthful spark gone. Now 21, she was living in poverty with a husband and baby daughter and desperate for an opportunity to rise out of the life of servitude.

Belmaya grasped the chance to pick up the camera again and learn how to make films. I had been seeking a way of documenting Belmaya’s life without casting her as the passive subject of my film. And so, I set out to follow the journey of an unlikely filmmaker, and as Belmaya gained camera skills, she would play an active role in her portrayal.  

She met opposition from her conservative husband and family as she strived for an independent voice. As she took charge of her camera the power balance shifted in more ways than one. As well as making her own graduation film, she has recorded much of the footage for my documentary, giving private, tender and eye-opening glimpses of her domestic life. Together with the teenage tapes, the result is an extraordinarily intimate window into Belmaya's world, spanning 13 years.

Domestic strife and the 2015 earthquakes threatened to derail her ambitions. But she persisted and in 2017, her first film, Educate Our Daughters, a personal take on the importance of education for girls, was selected for KIMFF, along with a second film about boatwomen’s struggles in Pokhara.

Educate Our Daughters went on to be selected for prestigious festivals in Toronto, Chicago and the UK.

I Am Belmaya screens at 1pm on Saturday 14 December at KIMFF

City Hall, Kathmandu

Q&A with Sue Carpenter and Belmaya Nepali.

www.belmaya.com