Friday, November 14, 2014

Bayberries Have Ripened: Official Selection: Faith: Grace Film Festival

 

Bayberries Have Ripened
Nepal
Language: Napali
Runtime:
Category: Faith
Screen Date: April 2015



The film is set in the countryside of Nepal during the civil war period, where most men were either abroad or displaced because of the war. A countryside where orient cuckoo bird (known locally as Kafal Pakyo ) tweets continuously. Sushmadevi, a mother of two sons whose husband is abroad, directs her sons to take their cow for fertilization. As the boys bring back the cow, worshiped as a mother and giver, they are faced with a new realization.
Director: Niranjan Raj Bhetwal
Niranjan Raj Bhetwal was born on 5th of March, 1990 AD. He joined Film College in the year 2009 and he graduated in the year 2014 AD. His Graduation film was selected in the 'opening Section' of Ekadeshma Film Festival 2014: Creating Ripples.
Directors photo high qualityDirector’s Statement
I was thinking a short story for my graduation project. I was more concerned about social issue. I started recalling my past.

I spend my childhood in countryside of Nepal with my family. I was grown up listening the ambience of jungle, songs of birds and sound of river. I spent my most of the childhood day with my grandfather, listened his past experiences and some stories with a moral lessons where he told me the story of the Cuckoo bird.

After few years, Maoists started civil war in Nepal. Maoist took many young people and forced them to join the rebel group. Due to the fear of war, my family migrated to the capital city. The beginning days of our city life were hard. In Hinduism cow is taken as holy mother. We Hindus believe that people will be pure from sin even by drinking the urine of cow. By this thinking and for business my mom started selling the milk of cow to manage our daily expenses and our school fees but, it was not enough. One day my dad took a decision to go foreign country to work and thus, he left.
One day cow made continuous loud sound in its shed. We found that cow needed to be taken for fertilization. For breeding and fertilization, only males are allowed in our Nepali Hinduism based culture. But the condition was, there were no any youths in village. My mom ordered me to take for breeding as I was the only male person in the family.

Then, this film, Kafal Pakyo, was born.

The primary themes of Kafal Pakyo are physical desire of humans and animals, family, society, war and religion. The film focuses on the intersection of all of these themes through the holy cow and two teenager brothers. As they discover who they are, so do we. Through their stories, we as viewers, come to understand more fully the meaning of family and religious belief.
Through the voices of these brothers, story of cuckoo, physical desires of cow and the situations of women in the film, we begin to understand what they face, and understand more deeply our own complex relationships, society, culture and religion. I hope, Kafal Pakyo will start a dialogue about what we see, who we are and the situations passed by Nepali women at the time of war.
This film is about these two brothers, their family, their cow, their society, their belief, their nation and more than 15,000,000 people who were affected because of the civil war.

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