Documentary in Nepal | Documentary of Nepalese woman who climb Everest

Documentary in Nepal

Pasang Lhamu Sherpa was not raised to conquer mountains. Denied an education, she was expected to submit to an arranged marriage and spend her life serving her family in the rural Nepalese village she called home. But Pasang Llamu had other ideas, marrying a man she loved, for one, and starting a business with him in bustling Kathmandu. She also began climbing mountains.

Forty years after New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Pasang Lhamu’s fellow Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach Mount Everest’s 29,035-foot summit during their 1953 expedition, she became the first Nepali woman to match their achievement.

Pasang Lhamu’s life, and passion for reaching the top of the world’s tallest mountain, is encapsulated in Marin County filmmaker Nancy Svendsen’s “Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest.” The documentary, which recently opened the Green Film Festival of San Francisco, makes a return to the Bay Area on Sunday, Oct. 23, as part of the 25th United Nations Association Film Festival.

It was at a family dinner that Svendsen first learned of Pasang Lhamu. In Nepal, she is a national hero, with a statue built in her honor in Kathmandu, a street named after her, as well as a hospital and a school. She has even been on a postage stamp and was the recipient of the Nepal Star of Tara, the country’s highest honor. Dozens of Nepalese women took inspiration from her to summit Everest. But she is little-known outside the country and mountaineering circles. Svendsen made it her mission to change that after her brother-in-law, Dorjee Sherpa, shared his sister Pasang Lhamu’s story.

“It was truly one of those, what people used to call, ‘aha! moments,’ when you have this kind of bizarre, strange connection,” Svendsen said in a phone interview with The Chronicle, describing her initial reaction to what she learned.

“It was such a moving story about his sister and how she desperately wanted a bigger life. She didn’t want to be confined to the little village that she was born in, with this life her parents picked out for her. She struggled against these tremendous odds, societal and cultural norms; the fact that she was a woman in a male-dominated society and a religious minority, all of that.”

That dinner was the beginning of a more than 10-year odyssey for Svendsen as she embarked on a first feature fraught with challenges. Pasang Lhamu died on Everest at 31, shortly after her triumph, her legacy now the responsibility of her family. If Svendsen hoped to make a film, she needed their cooperation — particularly that of Pasang Lhamu’s daughter, Dawa Futi Sherpa, now Nepal’s ambassador to Spain, who was only 12 when her mother died. She had never spoken to anyone about her mother and was not sure she wanted to start with Svendsen’s documentary. It was a long process gaining her friendship and trust.

Documentary in Nepal

Source : https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/documentary-unveils-long-elusive-story-of-nepalese-woman-who-defied-caste-systems-to-climb-everest