Castaway Man

Castaway Man

Nepal

2016

82 mins

Nepali, English and Hindi with English Subtitles

Documentary

Synopsis

The documentary traces the sudden disappearance of Dor Bahadur Bista; a controversial public figure regarded by many as the "father of Nepal's anthropology". Bista's seminal book Fatalism and Development: Nepal’s Struggle for Modernization, among his other works, identifies and critiques Brahminism, which he considers a set of fatalistic beliefs that are incipient in, and perpetuated through, the Hindu hierarchical caste system, as being one of the root conditions of Nepal's under-development. There are several speculations that surround his disappearance: he committed suicide, he was murdered by high-caste enemies that his ideological commitment unintentionally cultivated over time, his alleged affair with a young woman under his mentorship, and a recluse that he became to spend the final phase of his life on the banks of the Ganges in North India.

Director

Kesang Tseten

Kesang Tseten has been making films, mainly documentaries, for the last 16 years. His films, screened regularly in Nepal and internationally, include Frames of War, We Corner People, a trilogy about Nepali migrant workers working in the Gulf states, and On the Road With the Red God: Machhendranath. Tseten's Who Will Be a Gurkha won the best documentary award at ImagineNATIVE 2013. He also wrote the screenplays for feature length films Mukundo and Karma.

Kesang Tseten

Other Info:

Previous Screening:

2015 Film South Asia, Kathmandu

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