* This feature article is a part of women in Nepali film industry series. Previous article in the series was female directors in Nepali film industry.

Like every other fields, film writing in Nepali film industry is also dominated by males. Only a few writers are female. When the script writing is done by the wife of the director or the producer of the movie, question arises how genuine the writer is. For example, wife of noted director Sambhu Pradhan’s wife Nutan Pradhan and actor and producer Bhuwan KC‘s ex-wife Sushmita KC have also written scripts.

Actress Arunima Lamsal wrote the script of ‘Deepsikha‘. When the movie failed to impress audience, Arunima’s career as a writer is considered to have ended. Another writer, Kusum Anshal is also known to write the script of a movie made jointly by Nepal and India – ‘Panchawati’. Last year, actress Benisha Hamal had told about writing the script of a movie but, nothing is heard about that again. 

Apart from dedicated script writing, some stories of literature personalities have also been converted to movies. The movie ‘Bhagya Rekha’ is made on a story of writer Bhagirathi Shrestha. Another movie ‘Shirishko Phool’ is also written on the story of the book by the same name by Parijat.

When talking bout song writing in movie, there aren’t many female lyricists either. Few female lyricists in Nepali film industry include Kusum Gajmer, Sushila Poudel, Amrita Nepal, Rekha Ojha, Sanjiwani Minu etc. Kusum Gajmer has written some songs for Tulsi Ghimire‘s movies. Sushila Poudel has written songs for ‘Bijayapath’. Amrita Nepal had written the popular song ‘Slowly Slowly … ‘ of Rekha’s movie ‘Kali‘. Other female song writers in Nepali films include Rekha Ojha and Sanjiwani Minu.