Manakamana

Manakamana (2013)

A documentary about a group of pilgrims who travel to Nepal to worship at the legendary Manakamana temple.

Date of release
2013-09-28
TMDB
7.5 / 10 (26)
Runtime
1h 58m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Pacho Velez, Stephanie Spray

Casting

Interesting facts

Manakamana is a 2013 documentary film directed by Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. It is an experimental documentary about pilgrims traveling on the Manakamana Cable Car between Cheres, Chitwan and the Manakamana Temple in Nepal. The film has been acquired for U.S. distribution by The Cinema Guild.

Production

The film was made by directors Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez on 16 mm film. It was produced with support from Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab. The film uses village locals that effectively "play" themselves. Velez explains that "in terms of direction we talked to everyone before we filmed. We were in a town four-to-five hours away by bus from the cable car; about 80 kilometers. We chose the people, we gave them a ride, we talked to them.

Each shot is about nine minutes, and encompasses the length of the entire 2.8 kilometer ride up to the temple or down. Wanting consistent framing, Nepali carpenters were hired to build a stable wooden base onto which the filmmakers anchored their hi-hat tripod. Some viewers mistakenly believe that Spray and Velez were not present in the cable car during the shooting.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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