2022. 1 online resource (40 min.) In Limbu with English subtitles.
This wonderfully crafted independent science fiction film Ningwasum (Memories) is a powerful assertion of Indigenous aspirations and reimaginings. While the film’s explicit central themes are indigeneity and climate change, implicit are the going concerns of caste, gender, race, and geopolitics. In this futuristic image of the Himalayas, primarily shot in the Sherpa Nation and Yakthung Nation (not yet recognized as such by the government of Nepal) with drone footage, backgrounded by melodious Himalayan flutes, chanting, and electronic music, the film’s creativity lures the audience to a peaceful world away from the noisy city to explore the very concepts of time, space, and memories. By weaving Himalayan folk tales, symbols, and cultural practices in the form of beautifully narrated storytelling entirely in Limbu, one of the Indigenous Yakthung languages spoken in eastern Nepal, Yakthung artist Subash Thebe Limbu brilliantly centres the experiences of historically marginalized communities, moving away from their typical portrayal of “backwardness” to peoples who have agency, technology, and sovereignty.
The film follows two time travellers from the future, Miksham and Mingsoma, played by Subin Limbu and Shanta Nepali, respectively. While most of the film focuses on Miksham, who lands in the Yakthung Nation in search of their lost father, Mingsoma makes their debut in the film’s final chapter. The mothership featured in the film is designed based on Silam Sakma, a Yakthung ritual object typically accepted as a symbol of their identity. While the film is narrated in the Limbu language, it is accessible to non-Limbu-speaking audiences through English subtitles. Lastly, the significance of Miksham’s appearance is also of central concern. While incorporating elements of queerness throughout the film, their combination of a traditional gold bulaki (nose ring) with a futuristic space suit redefines what it means to be Indigenous today, from their typical boundedness to a place (village), tradition, and history to transnationalism, modernism, and self-determinism.
Meditatively walking through the beautiful mountains, hills, forests, rivers, and rocks of the Yakthung Nation, Miksham finds “scattered memories” of their father and ancestors. Miksham is thus emotionally connected to this place as much as perhaps we, the audience, are, and specifically with Indigenous and marginalized communities from that region. While suggesting that their future timeline is a much better place—“something that we cannot imagine”—Miksham is empathetic of our chaotic world marked by “colonialism, Brahminical patriarchal casteism, racism” and climate change. In some ways, we can assume that Miksham is our future, and we are their past. However, while Miksham has the power to “kick arses” and make our world a better place, the time traveller’s protocol prevents them from intervening in our timeline. Consequently, Miksham explains that the fight is ours alone.
Thebe Limbu’s holistic use of Limbu language in this futuristic sci-fi film is bold and refreshing, and a stark contrast to the typical Kollywood—Kathmandu-based film industry—production, that regularly centres the dominant Nepali national language. Thebe Limbu’s assertive use of one of Nepal’s many Indigenous languages particularly moved me as an Indigenous Tamang scholar from Nepal, whose native language has often been associated with backwardness and ridicule in dominant media portrayals. Moreover, rather than having Limbu narration translated into Nepali subtitles for a Nepali audience alone, it was translated into English. In this way, Thebe Limbu is clearly conscious not only of his work being accessible to broader audiences beyond the Nepali nation-state, but also of its role in fostering Indigenous resistance and transnational solidarity.
This is not surprising given the director’s history of sociopolitical resistance work via various arts genres in Nepal. In his debut within the sci-fi film genre, Thebe Limbu is strongly influenced by “Afrofuturism” and “Indigenous futurism,” widely understood as activist practices incorporating Indigenous artistic expression in speculating future reimaginings where Indigenous ways of being and knowledge are thriving. Adopting this movement to a region-specific context (Nepal and broadly South Asia), Thebe Limbu coins his work Adivasi (Indigenous) futurism. In his supplemental paper of the same title, “Adivasi Futurism” (Academia, 2020), Thebe Limbu points to Adivasi futurism as “a space where Adivasi artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers can imagine and speculate future scenarios [where] they have agency, technology, and sovereignty and where their Indigenous knowledge, culture, ethics, and storytelling remains intact.”
In this manner, the last chapter of the film draws the audience’s attention to the fighting spirit before Miksham leaves for their home. Through intricately weaving Miksham’s flashbacks to the ceremonial blessings of their birth in another time, where they are shown the “moon, the sun, and the stars for the first time,” Thebe Limbu intends the same blessings for the audience. Though his audiences are global, as his work has been shown in Nepal, Australia, Canada, and the United States, his message particularly hits home to region-specific Indigenous and marginalized communities whose current potential may be unrealized. Against the familiar ascending sounds of the flutes and the picturesque Himalayas, Miksham is seen smiling for the first time. Their smile radiates across the screen, and their message is loud and clear as they narrate, “struggles you will overcome, cosmic tales you will tell, and memories you will create. And of course, arse you will kick.”
If there is any small critique to make of this remarkable film, it is that I wish it were widely available to the general public. While the trailer can be accessed online, this masterpiece begs to be seen and recognized, particularly in Nepal, but it is only available to institutions for a significant fee. Second, the film is a niche production in that only Limbu-speaking, and English speakers/readers may be able to grasp the intricacies of the narrations. Having said that, because of its expansive visuals and emotional weight, one does not need to speak Limbu nor read English to feel the significance of the power behind the film. The film is political, idealistic, and aesthetically pleasurable, in all of the ways it shows how Indigenous and marginalized communities are unapologetically asserting their own unique ways of being.
Amrit Tamang
University of British Columbia, Vancouver