Ravi Baral
- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Ravi Baral started his career as a producer and director for Nepal Television (NTV) from 1988 to 1993 where he produced and directed several documentaries and also anchored Spotlight, a current affairs program. In 1988, Baral also presented Music Magazine and through this program, became the first VJ in South and South East Asia! He also produced the tripartite (China-Japan- Nepal) expedition to Mount Everest. Later on, after founding Media Alert and Relief Foundation in 1993, a non-profit, non- government organization that alerts the general public, through educational films - on areas of health, population, gender equality, women empowerment, the environment and other social issues, he serves Media Alert and Relief Foundation as its Founder and Excutive Chairman. He is also the owner of Lead Kindly Light Pictures. He sits on the Board of Far Too Young Inc., a US based non-profit formed recently that works towards the welfare of women and children around the world. He continues to write and direct infomercials, edutainment films, PSAs, documentaries and film scripts and awareness campaigns. Mr. Baral is also the producer and director of Chameli (1999/2000) a full length feature on anti-girl trafficking. The film won four national Nepal Motion Picture Awards and received many international recognitions. He personally won two awards- Best Story, Best Art Director for the film. Through this film, Mr. Baral introduced Dolby Digital Sound for the first time in his native country Nepal. He also produced and directed another feature, Ramjham (2002) - a musical for peace. The motive of the film was to recover the lost peace of Nepal and to revitalize its eroding democracy through a celluloid campaign for which he received the US Government's Democracy Grant award for advocating democracy and peace. He was also the co- producer of the internationally acclaimed documentary on child trafficking, The Day My God Died, which was nominated to the EMMYs in 2005.
Between 1999 to 2007 Ravi Baral was Consultant Editor of a political weekly Janajyoti and the Chief Editor of Health Alert (1996 to 2015), a quarterly health magazine. Baral has been a media consultant to many communications projects undertaken by the Government of Nepal, USAID, DFID, UNICEF, UNIFEM, World Bank. He produced a CD called Maynati, a collection of poems against modern day slavery, now in its third edition. Baral wrote and directed a series of COVID-19 awareness films that were disseminated internationally. He is also the writer and director of Kalikai Umerama (2022) and co-producer and director of Far Too Young, short films against child marriage (2021). For the last five years, Ravi Baral has researched and written the screenplay for a film on gender equality and against the child marriage which will be produced by Far Too Young, Inc.