Mountains, makeshift cinemas: Bhutan's battle to make movies

When Bhutan's top director Tshering Wangyel finishes a film, he and his staff take to the Himalayan countryside for months at a time armed with a projector, tent, screen and tickets.
Movie making in the isolated kingdom is strenuous business. Not only do you have to teach yourself the filmmaking basics, but you must lug a makeshift cinema from village to village to reach Bhutan's movie-loving population.
Despite the lack of infrastructure, Bhutan's 25-year-old industry is thriving, with audiences in one of the most remote countries on earth flocking to homegrown movies that blend Bollywood with traditional Buddhist teachings.
"Currently, it takes us a year to cover the country for screenings. I used to do it myself all the time, now I send my staff," Wangyel told AFP in the capital Thimphu.

"Last year, my boys took a car, a screen, a tent, a projector, tickets - they went from district to district, setting up a makeshift cinema in each venue or using school auditoriums."
The long wait for screenings has also fuelled a thriving piracy industry, with impatient audiences eager to watch illegal copies of the Dzongkha-language films.

Despite these challenges, however, the industry has expanded substantially, with annual output jumping from three films a decade ago to 15 films this year.
Each year, it attracts new entrants like aspiring director Killey Tshering, who turned a friend's bungalow into a film set and secured funds from a cousin, all to make his debut venture, "Nga Dha Choe" (You and Me).

"Filmmaking in Bhutan is a community enterprise -- friends lend their houses, relatives give you money, everyone helps out on set," Tshering, 27, told AFP on the sidelines of his shoot.
The popularity of local films has seen fans give the boot to Bollywood productions, which are rarely shown these days in Bhutan's handful of cinemas after dominating screens for decades.
However, the influence of the Mumbai-based industry on its Bhutanese counterpart is unmistakable.
Although a small number of Bhutanese films, including 1999's "The Cup", directed by a Tibetan Buddhist lama, have found critical and commercial success overseas, viewers at home prefer movies with a dose of song and dance.

"If a film is too artistic or realistic, it won't work. Our audiences like a formula - it must include songs, dances, humour and tears," Wangyel said.
Critics blame Bhutan's isolation, which only allowed access to television in 1999, and its limited exposure to world cinema for the formulaic but commercially successful productions.
"The sad part is we say we are so proud of our culture but then you look at our films, it's like we have picked up a broken piece of mirror from Bollywood's vanity case," said independent filmmaker Tashi Gyeltshen.