SIFF Part 8: "Fairytale of Kathmandu"

So, as I mentioned in my "Part 6" post, we went to see "Fairytale of Kathmandu" at 11:00 at Pacific Place Cinema on Saturday. It's a documentary about Irish poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh (pronunced "KA-hal O'SHARkey), a well-regarded Irish-language poet also respected for his courage in coming out as a gay man and continuing to live in rural Ireland. Filmmaker Neasa Ní Chianáin (didn't catch the pronunciation of her name) had long admired Cathal's poetry and his philanthropic activities in Nepal, so she set out to make a documentary about him and was invited by Cathal to accompany him on one of his trips to Kathmandu.

But during the course of the trip, Neasa eventually has to face the fact that Cathal's "philanthropy" actually consists of plying very young men (as young as sixteen, the age of consent in Nepal) with cash "for their studies" and gifts in exchange for sex. While his activities are not actually illegal, they are clearly exploitative and damaging to the young men involved.

A key part of the film is Neasa's own journey from being an uncritical admirer, to a willfully oblivious half-observer, to a witness of conscience. She ends up interviewing some of the young men and then confronts Cathal on camera about the harm he has caused. He, of course, denies that he has done anything wrong and insists that he has helped these Nepalese boys.

Neasa Ní Chianáin was at the screening, and the Q&A session afterwards was riveting. When she realized that she wasn't going to be able to make the feel-good film she originally set out to make, she had to go back and explain that to her three funders, who were very nervous about the film's new direction but eventually went ahead with it. Even before the film came out, it generated tremendous controversy in Ireland, with the Irish-language and gay communities rallying to Cathal Ó Searcaigh's defense, saying the film misrepresented him, and others expressing outrage at the poet's activities and demanding that his poetry be pulled from schools. I was very impressed with Neasa Ní Chianáin's courage in bringing this film to the public and telling the story that needed to be told.

This film has everything you want in a documentary: It has a strong subject, it challenges your assumptions, it raises difficult questions, it makes you feel uncomfortable. (I'm beginning to formulate an idea about documentaries: If it makes you uncomfortable, it's a documentary; if it doesn't, it's publicity.)