Stephanie Spray

Manakamana

Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez

Chabbi Lal Gandharba, Amish Gandharba

A documentary about a group of pilgrims who travel to Nepal to worship at the legendary Manakamana temple.

Somniloquies

Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel

Portia Alexandria-Ross, Terry Bernard

Works with sound recordings of Dion McGregor, who became famous for talking in his sleep.

As Long As There's Breath

Stephanie Spray

An intimate video work depicting a Nepali family’s struggles for cohesion, despite everyday travails and the absence of a beloved son.

Monsoon-Reflections

Stephanie Spray

A deeply felt reflection on labor, gender, and fleeting pleasures in rural Nepal, filmmaker Stephanie Spray's short but powerful documentary on two strong-willed female field hands captures the monotonous and arduous nature of their work during Monsoon season. Spray's close friendships with the women (who were also passengers in Spray and Velez' monumental film Manakamana) allows for an intimacy and honesty rarely seen in anthropological works.

KĀLE AND KĀLE

Stephanie Spray

In exploring the lives of two wandering Nepali musicians, an uncle and nephew who share the same name and are featured in filmmaker Stephanie Spray's and Pacho Velez's acclaimed documentary Manakamana, Kāle and Kāle (pronounced kah-lay) exposes the rootless occupation of the Gaine caste and communicates both its joys and pitfalls - domestic, economic and spiritual - in their daily lives. Rejecting didacticism as a means of ethnographical observation, the film consists of distinct episodes that value the quality of the genuine moment. Spray couples both meaningful and disconcerting human interactions with the sights and sounds of natural familiarities such as grass, smoke, insects, animals, and traditional Nepalese folk music, opening up an evocative new world that the viewer is invited to slowly and deliberately experience.

Untitled

Stephanie Spray

A revealing one-shot portrait of two Nepali newlyweds in a moment of rest and playful interaction, Stephanie Spray's Untitled challenges our perception of two themes at the very core of ethnographic filmmaking: human relationships and the ways in which they can be experienced by the viewer. Only fourteen minutes long, Untitled is uncut, rejecting the implications of edited sequences and also purposefully excluding subtitles over the couple's conversation. The style of the film confronts the history of ethnography as a controversial study of the "other" by refusing us any clear messages or meanings behind what is being presented, challenging the viewer to come up with their own answers to any questions that may arise.