KATHMANDU: Cinema in Nepal is slowly catching up with the current technologies. Harke Films and Docskool has started a collaborative project in technical partnership with Goteborg International Film Festival. The project is called Short Film Factory (SFF), a concept born during second Docskool workshop on film in October 2009, in order to promote and produce short films.

The SFF project 2010 basically is a feature length, theatrical release film project the goal of which is to promote short filmmaking. This project will be followed by six other films from 2010 to 2012. The SFF project 2010 will be creating a feature length film comprising three short films made by individually selected filmmakers from Nepal. At a press meet held on January 23, production manager of the SFF project Arjun Karki said, “Docskool will release a feature length film based on the scripts that have been selected from three participant directors — Pooja Gurung, Kshitiz Adhiraj and Abhinash Bikram Shah. Three individual movies will be compiled as they are relatively linked.”

Rajesh Gangachu a scriptwriter by profession and also the producer of this SFF project made his selection out of 12 scripts. “One common theme namely ‘Contemporary Nepal’ was put up for the competition. It took me time to select the scripts for there were many with very little knowledge with regards to script writing. Rigorous process of rewriting and mentoring went on to finalise the script,” he said.

The production will probably take place between February and April 2010 and is scheduled for a tentative release in May. This will infact become the first component film to be showcased in Nepal that will observe official distribution too.