BENGALURU: What do you do when life snatches away everything that you hold dear? Kesang Tsetan, one of Nepal’s renowned directors, spoke about his documentary, Trembling Mountain, which is based on the situation of Langtang after an earthquake measuring 7.8 on Richter scale caused an avalanche, which swept away the entire village. About 176 villagers and 80 hikers were killed during the incident. Tsetan portrayed the entire situation in his documentary.
He spoke about how villagers took refuge at monasteries after the incident as they had no places to stay. “At first, I was a little hesitant about filming the whole disaster. After all, who wants to document a disaster? It is truly unpleasant. But their determination to get back to normal and start their livelihood encouraged me to produce the documentary,” explained Tsetan. It was filmed over a period of one year to capture the exact situation of the villagers while they were trying to re-build their lives.
The director spoke about his protagonist named Gyalpo, a cheese maker, who reached out to the director for some goat’s milk to feed his ailing daughter. The documentary shows their effort to return to normalcy after the earthquake and throw light on the life of survivors and their emotions after losing their family and friends. “It was a challenge for me. It drew me in and I filmed this documentary to find out answers to so many questions,” added Tseten. Everyone was invited to a studio and were requested to share their feelings which were documented.
Trembling Mountain is a development film to let everyone know about the situation of villagers whose entire livelihood depends on tourism. It also narrates a transition of how the herders of Nepal are slowing turning into lodge owners and businessmen. For example, a clip in the movie shows an old man with wrinkles all over his face, when asked about how he was going to sell his cattle as his son died during the quake and he did not know how to to herd them. Tsetan said everyone around was surprised to hear that he did not know the process.
The film ends with villagers setting up temporary homes and industries to earn some money and get back to business. “The thing we don’t understand is that we reach out to the villagers and document their lives. But all that matters is what you plan to do with it. Most of them are expressive in the most unusual ways and documenting their life was a learning experience for me,” said Tseten.