Ram Bahadur Tamang: The face of Film South Asia
"FILM SOUTH ASIA "BEST FILM TROPHY"IS NAME AFTER RAM BAHADUR TAMANG"
For ten years, this ordinary Nepali man’s photo has been a rallying
call for documentary film-makers across South Asia, home to one fifth of
humanity.
He has become the symbol, and the logo, of Film
South Asia (FSA), a regional film festival organised every other year in
Kathmandu since 1997. FSA is the leading and most enduring film
festival that brings together South Asian film-makers and film-lovers.
It is a low-budget, high-energy festival organised by the non-profit
Himal Association.
It turns out that the FSA logo is derived
from this photo, taken of an ordinary Nepali called Ram Bahadur Tamang.
Photocredit goes to Cory R Adams.
Ram Bahadur belonged to the Tamang people, who are believed to have
migrated to Nepal from Tibet. Today, the Tamangs reside mainly in the
high hills north of Kathmandu.
Perhaps inspired by my query,
Kanak has written up the story behind the photo/logo in his column On
the Way Up in the latest issue of Himal Southasian which he edits.
He says: “The Tamang from Byabar served the Rana palaces as guards and
porters. Ram Bahadur was one such. One day, he was caught by a
photographer holding an early-model Sony video camera. He had a Sirdi
Sai Baba badge on his left lapel. The image of Ram Bahadur is now the
logo of the Film South Asia documentary film festival. He looks out over
the world through his camera and his other, free, eye. The trophy given
to the best film at the end of each FSA is known as the Ram Bahadur
Trophy.”
Not much more is known about old Ram Bahadur. He had
moved on shortly after this picture was taken. We don’t know, for
example, if he ever actually used the Sony camera, or was just playing
with what, at the time, seemed a high-tech curiosity. This was, after
all, the early 1990s when video cameras were not quite ubiquitous.
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