Himalaya (1999) (Nepal)

March 31, 2008 · Posted in Documentary

At first glance, the movie Himalaya is remarkable - a beautifully shot docudrama about Tibetan villagers fighting internal strife to maintain their annual trek to trade Tibetan salt for Nepalese grain. The landscape is breathtaking, and the cinematography constantly stops you in your tracks. Eric Valli’s tale of a real-life tribe from the Dolpo Valley received an Oscar nod for Best Foreign Language Film, but it’s not until you watch the special feature (’The Making Of’ by Deborah Kellner) on the DVD that you really understand what makes this film remarkable.

When Valli decided to recreate the drama of the Dolpo-pa’s epic journey through the Himalayas, he made some extraordinary decisions in order to preserve its authenticity. (It’s not surprising to discover he is also a National Geographic photographer.) First of all, he hired the Dolpo-pa to play themselves - people who had never been to a cinema, let alone acted in a movie. He also decided to film the movie entirely on location, making the same hazardous journey as the Dolpo-pa would - through perilous mountains, along sheer cliff edges and through blistering blizzards.

In 1997, 200 porters, 150 yaks (transport doubling as actors, with a fiberglass yak brought along for stunts), and 20 crew set off for the Dolpa Valley - ten days walk from the nearest road. They carried enough supplies with them for the planned 79-day shoot. Disaster followed disaster - permits were cut short, the main actor contracted bronchitis, some of the crew got stuck in a mountain pass. After six weeks, they finally started shooting.
As an indie film, Himalaya had a small budget. With almost every obstacle stacked up against them, Valli and his crew blew that through the roof. In the end, the movie took nine months to finish. The crew, some of whom had barely camped before, spent months in remotest Nepal with no electricity, running water or other creature comforts. Some even battled severe altitude sickness (they were working at 13-19,000ft).

As for the Dolpo-pa, as weeks stretched into months, some grew more and more disgruntled at being taken away from their day-to-day life. One can only hope they enjoyed the movie when it was finally completed. After watching ‘The Making Of’ documentary, it’s easy to feel in awe of what the filmmakers went through, completing as they did an adventure almost as profoundly difficult as the one portrayed in the movie they made. It’s also easy to wonder what effect all of this change had upon the Dolpo-pa, shaken from their existence by the arrival of a movie crew.
Whatever the case, the movie is a triumph over adversity, and a cinematographic masterpiece. It’s also a fascinating chance to see a remote world that most of us are unlikely to visit. If you ever get the chance to go there, why not drop in on the Dolpo-pa and see how they’re doing now? It would be fascinating to know… - Roshan McArthur

Article borrowed from here

Director:Eric Valli
Writers:
Nathalie Azoulai (writer)
Olivier Dazat (writer)
Runtime:108 min
Country:France / UK / Switzerland / Nepal
Language:Tibetan / German
Subtitles: N/A.
IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0210727/