Underplayed Gems

Fairytale of Kathmandu (2007)

Fairytale of Kathmandu poster
Directed by
Neasa Ní Chianáin
Genre
LGBTQ-related film
Country
Nepal, Ireland
Runtime
1h
Rating
6.5 of 10 from 6 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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How it feels

A documentary follows an Irish poet visiting Nepal and spending time with teenage boys. It examines whether his relationships with them are exploitative due to the difference in their ages and wealth. The film includes the poet's own statements about the relationships and the sex he had with some of the boys.

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What happens

Fairytale of Kathmandu is a 2007 documentary film by Neasa Ní Chianáin. The documentary focused on visits by the poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh to Nepal during which he had close relationships with many young boys of 16 years old or older. The documentary questioned whether Ó Searcaigh's relationships with these youths were exploitative and whether they demonstrated a power and wealth imbalance between the 50-year-old Ó Searcaigh and the young Nepalese. Ó Searcaigh is presented in the documentary as paying for the housing, food, bicycles, and clothing of boys. He mentions on camera having sex with some of them, denying that he abused them or that he coerced them into having sex with him. According to Ó Searcaigh, he had sexual relationships with only a "small fraction" of them, and that he has never indulged in anal intercourse in Nepal. In March 2008, Liam Gaskin, who had been acting as his public spokesman, stood down as a result of a DVD launched to defend Cathal Ó Searcaigh by his supporters in Kathmandu. One of the people interviewed to support the poet turned out not to be one of those in the documentary, but someone with the same first name, who had also been filmed, but who failed to make the final cut. No one in Kathmandu had seen the film by then, and none of the people featured in the film had signed release forms. Vinegar Hill, the production company, claimed that as the subjects were "peripheral" to the film, release forms were not used. However all three Nepalese youths interviewed in the film gave verbal permission for the use of their interviews in the film, and a trained counsellor, Krishna Thapa, director of an EU-funded Nepalese NGO, Voice of Children, was present for interviews with two of the three youths. Ó Searcaigh has only given two extended interviews since the film was broadcast. The first was in Irish, on Radió na Gaeltachta on 26 March 2008. The second, "The Case for the Defence" was for Hot Press magazine, in English, in February 2009. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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