Manakamana

Pilgrims heading to the Manakamana temple in Nepal reach the top of the mountain by cable car. The whole film takes place inside that cable car. Each ride is a single uninterrupted shot; the car goes up, then comes down, then new passengers get in. Some of them talk and some say nothing at all. On one trip the car is carrying goats. Directed together by Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez, the film was made at Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab and shot on 16 mm. There is no narrator, no music and no explanation; what you are seeing is for you to decide. Across one ride after another a broad cross-section of Nepali society passes through. It won the Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present section at Locarno in 2013.