WE CORNER PEOPLE (HAMI KUNAKO MANCHE)
They call themselves ‘corner’ people. No settlement lies beyond their high hills. The poorest among them are sub-subsistence; there is no electricity, and not a single shop. Children attend a 3-room school that goes up only to class 3; after that they must walk 4 hours daily. Villagers walk that distance just to buy chili or salt and to sell their bamboo weaving, their only means of a cash income.
Now a bridge comes to this remote village in Rasuwa District. The bridge will make life easier for villagers; and it will placate fear. One of the rivers straddling the village swept away a young bride when it inexplicably swelled. The event haunts the village.
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“But this straightforward tale turns into a narrative of present-day Nepal itself. In We Corner People , Kesang Tseten has distilled the country’s realities into the life of one village, bringing everything into the microcosm: poverty,underdevelopment, Maoism, evangelists, migrant labour, marriage, life and death. Like all great stories, it is told simply in the words and actions of the protagonists themselves.”
Kunda Dixit, Nepali Times
“Kesang Tseten’s decidedly non-preachy documentary is a subtle, multi-dimensional film telling the story of the bridge, not as a monumental or heroic achievement of development, but as an event that occurs within a local social history… The portrait is holistic ….a story of “participatory development,” told entirely without romance, false egalitarianism, or teleological overtones.”
Dr. Stacy Leigh Pigg, Simon Fraser University

