Sanam Kumar Bairag, who once made a distinguished name on stage, has been living in the UK for the past 23 years. A busy life in Britain kept him away from directing plays for about 16 years. However, since 2016, his thinking and determination to spread Nepali drama and film in foreign lands has started to flourish. He staged three plays in UK in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Now Sanam’s first film directed by ‘Kaidiko Patra’ is going to be screened from Baisakh 15th. The movie ‘Kaidiko Patra’ was made based on the story written by late Ishwar Manandhar. Years ago in a meeting late Manandhar has given two of his books to Bairag. Among them, after he liked a story included in the “Kaidiko Patra” very much, he felt the urge to make a play or a film based on that story.
When Sanam decided to take time out from his hectic life in Britain to make a film, Manandhar, the author of the book, had already passed away. And he gave permission to make a film on the book. Got it from Ishwar Manandhar’s son Vinod Manandhar (film producer). Director Bairag recalls that Vinod Manandhar praised him after watching the film when he came to Britain some time ago.
Director Bairag, who is currently in Nepal to arrange the release of the film, said in a meeting, “The film has become very different from the story of the book.” We have paid a lot of attention from the dialogue to the location. After watching the film in Britain, Vinod Manandhar Dai was a ‘surprise’. He praised that he had never imagined that such a good film would be made on his father’s book.
He has experience that it is very difficult to make a film based on a book. It is said that a character was like this in a book, but when making a film, you have to be able to explain that the character is like this. What the story wants to say should be shown through the gestures and expressions of the characters, so that the audience can understand the emotions of that character,” he says. He says that he made some changes while turning the book into a film.
Some films have been made based on books in Nepal before. However, most of them could not absorb the spirit and depth of the book. Is the ‘Kaidiko Patra’ exempt from this? Director Bairag claims that he did not kill the spirit and meaning of the book. According to him, only if the director is clear about what is to be understood by reading the story and what is to be interpreted by understanding it, the spirit and meaning of the book will not die.
If the things written by the author are fully understood, justice can be done while making the film. If you don’t understand the story itself, you can’t judge it,” he says. “I read the ‘Kaidiko Patra’ three hundred times and wrote it, I don’t have an account. It seems that I have not allowed the spirit and meaning of the book to die.” Sanam says that the experience of doing dramas in the past made it very easy to make a film.
