Actor, director and producer, Nikhil Upreti, has lodged a complain against the distributor of his movie ‘Bhairav’ over its removal from the theater without informing him. ‘Bhairav’ distributor for Kathmandu is BK Films, the company of Nikhil’s friend Gopal Kayastha and producer of Nikhil’s upcoming movie ‘Lootera’. Upon receiving the complaint, the Film Producers Association has summoned Kayastha for the clarification on the matter.
An audio report (in Nepali)
Nikhil’s debut movie as a director ‘Bhairav’ was removed from QFX Central, Civil Mall theatre on the second day of the show. The distributor Kayastha has also told that he wasn’t made aware by the theatre management about the removal of the movie from the theatre.
According to a media report, one of the multiplex operators QFX has decided to close its theaters because of the ban in screening Hindi movies starting from Monday. The distribution manager of QFX, Basanta Manandhar, told that they don’t have "any quality Nepali movie" to screen in their theaters. QFX’s all three theaters – QFX Jainepal, QFX Kumari and QFX Central in Civil Mall, Sundhara are closed for now. The report also says that another multiplex, BigCinemas, has also limited to operating only one of its theaters from Monday.
These decisions are told to be made in response to the CPN-Maoist (Baidhya faction) decision to ban the screening of Hindi movies in Nepal.
Do you think banning movies (or, banning anything for that matter) help in the development of a country?
Editor’s Note: This is the final part of “Who loves Nepali Movies?” article series.  This however is not a complete picture of Nepali theaters – there are a lot more to be written about. If we choose to publish more articles on the related theme, we will update this article in the future and, add the links to the new articles.
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Who loves Nepali movies? we do!
And, there are a lot of our friends, our visitors to this blog – they all love Nepali movies very much. Based on the love of the viewers, a lot of Nepali movies are being produced/released every month. At the same time, everybody agrees that the quality of the movie can’t be compared with Indian, Bollywood movies or English, Hollywood movies. Nepali movies have a limited market and our producers have limited resources in terms of producing movies. Not having a single shooting studio in Nepal explains how poor we are in terms of the infrastructure and resources to produce ‘good movies’. But, everybody admits: with such a limited resources we have witnessed some ‘very good’ movies and, that is something to be proud of.
We started this series to analyze if the theaters are treating Nepali movies fairly. Big Cinema, a theater operating on Indian investment announced not to screen Nepali movies accusing – Nepali movies do not have any quality. If that was the case why did they start the business in an immature market? Said that, we are not against some preferential business. They are free to compete in the free market. At the same time, business logic says that they also need to satisfy their client – Nepali people.
Big Cinema has no emotional attachment to Nepali movies. Theaters owned by our own Nepali citizens have emotional attachment with their own creations (most of them are producers too). But, it is a sad truth that they also prefer foreign movies to Nepali movies.
Fact Check Analysis
Big Cinema – You should learn to love Nepali movies if you want to do business in Nepal.
Guna Cinema – Heights of discrimination between Hindi movie and Nepali movie viewers.
Gopi Krishna Movies – Nepali viewers treated with negligence – discouraging the high class Nepali to watch Nepali moives.
QFX Central – Nepali version of Big Cinema. It should learn to love Nepali movies.
A new shopping mall, Civil Mall, was launched in the center of Kathmandu, Sundhara, in September of 2010. The mall is considered to be a luxurious shopping center similar to City Center. The main attraction of City Center was Big Cinemas, and the big attraction of Civil Mall is another big theatre. Probably, the most expensive theatre in Nepal is named QFX Central. Unlike Big Cinemas, QFX is financed by Nepali nationals and is also a part of Jai Nepal and Kumari theatre. But, that doesn’t mean QFX screens Nepali movies.
The motto of Civil Mall, “There is something for everyone,” is faulty. Sorry guys, you failed for majority of Nepali people, there is nothing for Nepali movie lovers.
Like Big Cinemas, QFX central also thinks Nepali don’t make quality movies and hence doesn’t screen any Nepali movies in it. All you can see in the new, luxurious theater are Hindi and English movies. They prefer flop Hindi movies like No Problem, Je Jyan Se Khelenge Hum to much better Nepali movies like Gorkha Paltan and Bato Muni Ko Phul. Continue reading
