Manakamana is the first feature collaboration between Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez, where they placed a fixed 16mm camera in a cable-car that takes passengers to and from the Manakamana Temple in Nepal.
Born out of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Laboratory (Leviathan, Sweetgrass), the eleven portraits in the film are at once a look at the commuters, but also an immersive experience for the spectator, who rides along.
We were very excited to talk about this film with Stephanie and Pacho, who joined us in our studio at OCAD U’s Graduate Gallery during TIFF13 to shed light on the Manakamana cable-car, the interaction between its passengers and the camera’s lens, and the creation of an unseen landscape through the passenger’s conversations.
This interview was released in July of 2014.
