The United government in Nepal has passed an ordinance requiring the scripts, and details about the cast and crew, of any movie that is to be shown in the theaters. This has always been the case with Nepali movies, but now the rule has been extended to foreign films as well.
What foreign films? Nepali theaters show perhaps half-dozen Hollywood titles every year. More than half of the box-office revenue in Nepal comes from Hindi movies from Mumbai. This ordinance is aimed at a lazy, unimaginative, derivative-drivel-peddling Nepali film industry. If good taste and common sense were the only censors in the country, the half-dozen or so Maoist movies that have come out in the last two years would be the first to be barred from the theaters.
My questions to the government:
If, at a time when a large part of the Nepali population is claiming Hindi as their first language, how does it make sense to ask Hindi scripts to be translated either into English or Nepali?
What about a Gurung film? A Bhojpuri film? A Newari film? There are dozens of titles in each [perhaps just a dozen in Gurung, but Bhojpuri and Newari are much mroe prolific]. They are indigenous languages. Must their scripts also be translated into English or Nepali before the movies can be shown? Why? Kyeno, Commie Babu, kyeno?
What do they aim to gain by keeping foreign voices out of the theaters? Do I not, as an free citizen of a free country, have the right to decide whom to listen to and whom to ignore?
I know this is just a rant, but dyamn, my government is making my chosen vocation of writing and selling cheap, pornographic, violent stories a very difficult task.
My next project: "The Life and Times of Prachanda, our Supreme and Benevolent Leader, How he is Like Stalin [Just The Good Stuff]"
"I know this is just a rant, but dyamn, my government is making my chosen vocation of writing and selling cheap, pornographic, violent stories a very difficult task."
ReplyDeleteHmm, I guess I never got around to reading a product of your vocation....
Vacavillian