Belmaya and I are beside ourselves with excitement! Not just one, but both of her short films, Educate Our Daughters and Rowing Against the Flow, have been selected for the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF) 2017. This is an amazing accolade for a first-time filmmaker, especially one who has had no advantages in life, …
A virtual hello!
Very happy to catch up with Belmaya, now 25, and Bipana, who's about to turn 5 years old, via Skype. Both are in fine form. Belmaya is longing to get back to filming, but needs a regular income just to make ends meet and keep Bipana in school. I have a plan, in the form …
Update from Pokhara
If you've noticed a resounding silence from me in the past few months, it's because I've been feverishly filling in funding applications so that we can finish I Am Belmaya! Meanwhile, Belmaya herself has had a couple of visitors from the UK. The first, India Roche, who was volunteering at a school near Pokhara, arranged …
Production trip to Nepal
I have just completed our production trip to Nepal, where Belmaya finished making her own film, Educate Our Daughters - the culmination of her training and empowerment, a short documentary about the importance of education for girls, through the prism of her own lost childhood and her high hopes for her bright and sparky daughter …
Expanding the mind
I showed Belmaya a half-hour taster of the film today. I wanted to make sure she was happy with the way her life and family were portrayed. There were scenes that made her laugh and scenes that made her cry. At one point she had to leave the room because of memories the film stirred …
A Sublime education
A great day's shooting at the happy Sublime Academy in Pokhara, where the girls don't need to find their voice - they have them already, loud and clear! 'Girls need an education so we can eradicate gender inequality,' proclaimed Lakpa Sherpa, whose family moved to Pokhara in the west, all the way from the Solu …
