The following is a press release about a new film, The Truth about Kathmandu, by Paddy Bushe
The accusation that Cathal Ó Searcaigh is an exploitative sex-tourist is a lie. This is the conclusion drawn at the end of a twenty-minute film, The Truth about Kathmandu, which will be shown as part of Féile na Gréine: the Solstice Arts Festival, which runs in Waterville, Co. Kerry from Sunday 21st to Tuesday 23rd June. The film consists of interviews that the poet Paddy Bushe conducted with many of those who played important parts in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu. “What I heard in Kathmandu raises huge questions for both Vinegar Hill Productions and RTÉ”, Bushe says. “The young people to whom I spoke felt extremely angry at being exploited. They were angry, however, not at Ó Searcaigh, but at the way they felt used, abused and exploited by the film. These are the Nepalese young people a joint RTÉ/Vinegar Hill statement dismissed as being peripheral subjects, whose permission was not needed.”
Naryan Pant was the young man who was central to accusations made by Fairytale of Kathmandu. In an interview with Bushe, he makes very specific claims of intimidation, bribery and rehearsed answers in relation to his interview in the Vinegar Hill film. He also says that he contacted the film-maker soon after that interview was done, and requested that the interview should not be used, an interview for which he did not sign a permission form. A student leader says he was offered money to give an interview critical of Ó Searcaigh, an offer he declined. The young man in the advertising poster for the film, still on the film website, expresses his anger at how he was manipulated into something “false”. He signed no permission form, and says he would never give permission to be used in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu became. “Would young Westerners have been treated like this?” asks Bushe at the end of the film.
It was in the context of this filmed material that Cathal Ó Searcaigh agreed to go on the Late Late Show earlier this year. The show’s production team had seen some of the material, and it was to have been background material for the interview. RTÉ management’s subsequent insistence on a pre-recorded interview, with pre-conditions and with an RTÉ lawyer present, caused Ó Searcaigh to withdraw from what, in effect, would have been an appearance censored by RTÉ’s corporate management..
The film will be shown in Tech Amergin, Waterville, Co. Kerry on Monday 22nd June at 2.30 pm. See www.feilenagreine.com for full programme.
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