Jumla Production Team

Jumla is a district in the west of Nepal. This is where our film takes place.



In May 2011, I returned to Jumla to participate in another EWN (Empowering Women of Nepal) training. After the training was complete, I planned to visit the women I had in mind for the film. Get a sense of who would be featured and put all the pieces together in advance of when we shoot in November.

I feel very blessed that my scout went as well as it did. Everything fell into place. Everyone was very receptive to participating in the project.The women and their husbands. Possibly even more key, I found my production team. Soraj Shahi is a godsend and my production manager. I had known him from last year as he works with EWN as their field officer in Jumla. He speaks good English and knows everyone and everything in Jumla. He is smart, resourceful and I couldn't have asked for more. Anyone who can persuade the next door neighbours to give us electricity and let us drill a hole through their wall to wire it into our room, understands how to make things happen.


In addition to Soraj, I found a production assistant, Nisha Budha. We met when she attended the training this year. She is bright and although her English isn't amazing (yet), she is keen to help and understands my vision. She is also female. Down the line, I am going to want to have a woman with me talking to the women about women’s issues, and Soraj is capable of many things but whichever way you look at it, he is still male.



During scout week we went all over the district, interviewing women just to get a sense of who might be comfortable on camera and to give Sophie an idea of the conditions she will be shooting in when we come back with the tullo (big) camera.

Rooftop interview with a very sophisticated set up.

Team assembled. Our 'production office' is the back room upstairs at the guest house in Chautara (in case you were wondering). There was a wonderful camaraderie that developed in those days together and the rest of the local community very much embraced me and the project. It was an incredibly inspiring and affirming experience for me and I returned to Sophie full of ideas as well as messages of good will.

Our tickets are now booked. We arrive in Nepal at the end of October. I have a tentative schedule in place, so things are becoming more of a reality as each day passes. Soon the vision will be more than just an idea in my head.

My team in the production office and freshly baked buckwheat cake.

Postcards from Nepal

One of the 'perks' from our Indiegogo fundraising campaign was a 'postcard from Nepal'. Due to the success of our campaign, I ended up with over 60 postcards to write to our contributors.


I thought it would be a nice touch if the postcards were all of Jumla. I looked in tourist shops in Kathmandu and Pokhara but couldn't find anything. Being that Jumla is not really an established tourist destination, it isn't really surprising there are not postcards. Yet. So I decided to make my own from the photos from last year's trip. I found a shop that had handmade Nepali paper which was pretty thick, who were willing to cut me pieces to size so I ordered 80 pieces and got 80 pictures developed. I glued them all together and drew lines on them to make them look like proper postcards.

I had wondered whether I could get away with "THANK YOU FROM NEPAL!" 60 times but I decided to actually write a proper individual postcard to each person. They deserved it! And most of the people who contributed were people I know personally. I also decided to write them when I was back in Jumla so I could talk about the training, the project and my feelings generally about being back. I set myself a goal of 10 a day. I didn't exactly stick to my goal but I had written almost all of the 60 postcards by the end of the trip.


Although likely to take an even longer time to be delivered, I liked the idea of posting them from Jumla also. Saroj (my newly-appointed production manager and general godsend) and I went along to the post office to see about buying 60 stamps for postcards sent to the US and UK primarily. This was a little more difficult that I anticipated. A group of men were sitting around outside and when we said we wanted to buy stamps a couple of them got up and led us inside. We explained that I wanted postcard stamps for the US and UK at which point one of them rummaged through the drawers on the desk and pulled out a small paper booklet. One looked at it for a while, then the other and eventually Soraj took over, trying to find US, UK, America, England or anything that might give us an indication of which band each country was in so we could buy the appropriate stamps. Eventually Soraj found it! Rs 25 for Great Britain and Rs 30 United States. Brilliant. The only trouble was that the only stamps they had were Rs 5 and Rs 10 and the stamps were so big they covered half the address as the cards would need three each. Why I thought they would have postcard stamps in Jumla when they don't have postcards is beyond me!


They would have to be posted from Pokhara. At least they were more likely to arrive if I posted them from there. Shyam and Savyata, my Pokhara family at Bishnu Lodge, helped me stick the single stamps we bought from the Pokhara post office over chiya (tea) and ladoo (my fave Indian sweet which I bought when we went into town to buy the stamps).

And that was it! Job done. As it turned out, it took over a month for them to arrive, but I was expecting that. The postmark on the ones I have seen is about a week later than they were actually posted.

What I wasn't expecting was the fact that is seems most people can't read my writing! One of my more cynical friends in LA said, "You should have just written 'thank you'".

But it is the thought (and effort) that counts, right?

the final and most important stage of this journey has begun...

I am back in Jumla now. It feels good to be here again.

The training starts tomorrow and this year it is in the village of Urthu about a three hour walk from the district town where the training was last year. (You can read my post about it from last year here).

After and probably during the training I'll be figuring out as much as I can about how things will work when we come back in the autumn to shoot. I am very excited to see the women again, as the village we are going to, Urthu, is home to quite a few of the ladies I taught last year and will likely be featured in the film. In fact, two of the ladies showed up here in town to greet us. It was so wonderful to see them! We will all be walking back to the village together when they have finished their shopping in the bazaar. They will no doubt put me to shame at my level of fitness as we trek to their home.

Nonetheless, I am very excited to be going to the village and spending this time with them all. This is truly the beginning of the most important stage of the planning for this film as I will be looking at all the logistics of how we are going to work the shoot (power considerations, distances between villages, willingness of villagers etc), figuring out where and who we will focus and enlisting the help of who will be our 'crew'.

This is really it! I am here!

the campaign is over but you can still DONATE!!!

Following the success of the campaign, we have had quite a few people wanting to donate who hadn't quite got around to it before the deadline... but fear not!

We now have a DONATE but up on our website for those of you who still want to make a contribution.

And a big thank you those of you who already have. We will still honour all the perks that we were offering during the campaign.

I have A LOT of postcards to write... xxx

Indiegogo campaign finished - next stop Pokhara!

The Indiegogo campaign is now finished and we raised $10,033! Even with a little help from our previously committed donors the campaign itself gathered over $7500!

It has been an incredible fund-raising campaign. Aside from reaching our goal, we also received so much encouraging and heart-warming support in the form of promotion and positive feedback, energy and love.

Tomorrow I move to Pokhara to start the next phase of this journey. I will be volunteering with EWN (Empowering Women of Nepal), as well as starting to iron out the logistics of our shooting in autumn. I will be going back to Jumla in May.

More news as it unfolds...

Nearly...at $5000!

As we move into the last month of the campaign, contributions are starting to pick up and another $500 has just helped push us closer to the halfway mark!

We have 18 days to go, so as they say in Nepal, 'heraun ke huncha' (let's see what happens).

Kathmandu!

We are now in the last month of the campaign and I write from Kathmandu where I have been for the past week. It is great to be here and getting a feel for the city, starting my Nepali classes and meeting a lot of amazing people who are doing very cool work here.

All of this experience for me is building the foundations for a deeper understanding of the this beautiful country and how different projects are making a difference.

The fundraising campain is in its last month. We are nearly at $4000 - still a long way from our goal but things are picking up as the last minute contributors get around to clicking the buttton!
Let's see what the final weeks bring!