“My film explores how children view the world and find happiness through simple life and the power of their imagination. The story takes place inside a century-old Buddhist monastery in Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of Buddha. We follow the daily routine of the youngest novice Hopakuli, and his older brother Chorten, both left by their mother at the monastery. In the midst of the vast untouched forests and sacred Buddhist pilgrimage site, the children let their natural fascination and longing for the world beyond Lumbini run wild.”
Congratulations on your film playing in Austin at SxSW this year! Is your first time here and are you planning to attend your screenings?
This is not only my first time at SXSW, but also my first feature film. I am planning to attend all of my screenings and I am very grateful for this opportunity.
So how did you get into this business? Talk to me a bit about how you got your start and what you have worked on in the past.
Art has always been the medium for me to confront and articulate my lived experience. After studying drawing in Canada, I decided to travel around Nepal, India, Kenya as well as Tanzania while worked as an art teacher for two years. This experience led me to pursue my passion in documentary filmmaking.
I decided moved to New York and attended the Social Documentary Film Program at the School of Visual Arts. For me, filmmaking is an extension of my personal practice that continues the exploration of questions of representation, human experience, and cultural translation. It is a dialogical process just like drawing that involves both observation and improvisation.
How did this project come together for you? Give me a rundown from the preparation, to shooting, to post-production to now!
In the summer of 2014, I visited Lumbini and lived among the monks for six months. In the beginning, I proposed my graduate thesis film idea on Buddhism to seven monasteries, they instead offered me to join them in their life and attend their daily practice. After a month practice, I was finally granted permission to film their morning and evening practices. With this opportunity, I camera tested different characters I had in mind. Finally, I chose to focus on one monastery of young children in particular. I edited the footage from the prayer secessions and showed it to the head monks as well as the children. All of them seemed to be fascinated by the camera and the idea of filmmaking so the monks invited me to teach the children classes during their free time. Over time, these little monks opened up to me. I started to see another side of monastic life. The young boys’ understanding of the world outside was influenced by TV, Facebook and other kinds of stimuli despite being geographically isolated. They shared with me their doubts and fears of the future, their innocent desires for puppy love, and even their favorite tree to climb on inside the enormous Lumbini Garden.
Slowly I was also granted permission to film in the halls. I always carried the camera around but never filmed intensely. I wanted the monks to get familiar with me and the camera. I allowed Hopakuli and some of the boys to play with the camera and shot their own films with it. Surprisingly, a lot of the children have a keen interest in filmmaking. They made some Kongfu films and filmed some of their secret playing locations. They showed me their footage and started sharing their stories. Initially, I was told that the dining hall and the bedrooms were off limits but as I spent more time filming and getting to know all the monks these restrictions were relaxed. This was an exercise in building trust. Eventually, I was being called the sister or the mother of these children. This experience with the monks shattered my previous romanticized understanding of monastic life as the popular media often portrays the monks as happy-go-lucky and carefree.
I chose Hopakuli as the main character partly because we had a special bond, as I was also a very imaginative child and had difficulty to fit into groups at a young age. When he held onto my hand when I was about to leave Lumbini for the first time, I could only see a four-year-old child who was helplessly looking for affection and love. It was then I felt committed to creating work that delves into these kids’ lives. After I shared my idea of the film to my classmates, two of my friends from school jumped on board and committed their time to the project. I was also really lucky to have shown some of the research footage to my mentor Alan Berliner very early on. I remember he emphasized that I should always be patient while filming and always let the scene to play out on its own. His advice ultimately helped to establish the style and pace of the film. I was graduated with my thesis film in the summer of 2016. After another six more months finishing the post, the film was finally completed. It was premiered at the Busan International Film Festival last year. This year we were invited to South by South West for our North America premiere, I am extremely excited for this opportunity and grateful for the support I have received throughout this process from the community.
What keeps you going while making a movie? What drives you?
I let myself to envision the experience of sharing the project on the big screen with audiences whenever I felt self-doubt and hopeless. It really helped me to continue and finish the film. I have many secret tricks to help me get through long hour editing such as coffee, different flavor herb teas, red wine, chocolates, cheesecake, hot bubble bath, epic long distance walks etc. I think at the end of the day, I finished the film because of my family and friends’ support.
What was your biggest challenge with this project, and the moment that was the most rewarding to you?
The biggest challenge for me was to learn, accept and grow from my past mistakes while I was making this film. I hope to move forward and apply my lessons to my next project in the future. The most rewarding moment for me was the first time to show the two-hours rough cut to a small community of filmmakers, friends and family, it validated my doubt in many ways.
I’m about to get technical, but I would love to know about the the visual design of the movie; what camera did you film with, your relationship to the director of photography.
I used the Canon C300 Mark II and Canon C100 for this film. I work closely with my two other cinematographers Amitahb Joshi and Paola Ochoa during production. They are close friends with me and also directors themselves. Prior to our production trip, I have shown them two films that stylistically I want to apply for my project. During actual production, we would always sit together at night talking about the story. We would go through the list of elements that make the story and discuss what scenes are still missing. Because I want a intimate and relaxed environment for the children in front of our camera. We never had a proper setup, it was more like the three of us lived there with our camera with the children.
What are you looking forward to the most about showing your movie here in Austin?
I am most looking for the responses of the film from the Austin audiences.
After the film screens at SxSW, where is the film going to show next? Theatrical, online, more festivals?
We are going to Hot Docs at Toronto in this April after SXSW and we will continue to work hard to bring A Little Wisdom to as many audiences as possible.
If you could show your movie in any theater outside of Austin, where would you screen it and why?
I would love to bring the film back to Nepal and show the film to the children on the big screen in a proper theater.
What would you say to someone who was being disruptive during a screening, even if it was one of your own?
It can be very destructive for the viewing experience to other audience. I hope we can each other the respect and act according during any of the screenings.
We have a lot of readers on our site looking to make movies or get into the industry somehow. What is the ONE THING you would say to someone who is wanting to get into the filmmaking business?
I was still enrolled in school when I started making this film. As a first-timer/student director, I expected the chances of getting grants or funding was going to be challenging. I remember one advise Werner Herzog gave out to young filmmakers is not to wait for the system to finance a project and for others to decide your fate. In order to complete the film at the time of graduation, I have always been able to maintain the budget within the range that I could be able to fund myself throughout the project. It was also difficult to balance my many roles especially as the director, the producer, and the editor at the same time. While I always wanted the make the best film possible, I also was restricted due to the budget I can afford to finish this film. It required a lot of extensive researching, learning as well as hassling. In addition, I think filmmaking is a team work, the sincerity and persistence in asking people’s support would help in a long way. In the end, it was an incredibly rewarding experience. One thing I can tell people is that making a feature can be quite cheap.
And final question: what is the greatest movie you have ever seen?
The recent film that I loved so much was AMERICAN HONEY by Andrea Arnold.
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Screening Information:
Alamo Ritz 2 on Saturday, March 10 at 6:15 PM
Alamo Lamar C on Sunday, March 11 at 2:15 PM
Alamo Ritz 2 on Thursday, March 15 at 2:00 PM