W orld traveling 27-year-old Nathaniel J. Menninger didn’t intend to become a filmmaker. He also didn’t aspire to speak Nepali. And he didn’t set out to create a documentary in the South Asian nation of Nepal where the Himalayan treasure, Mount Everest, stands. But he did all these things at the age of 24. Menninger’s documentary, The Porter: The Untold Story at Everest , currently available on Amazon Prime and YouTube, and soon to appear on KinoPoisk, Danger TV, and Adventure Plus, is 55 minutes of absorption into the life of the Nepali porter—those who carry the belongings and supplies of excursionists as they attempt to scale the 29,032-foot mountain peak with a border between China and Nepal that runs straight across its summit point. “I’d been doing adventures around the world for a few years before,” Menninger says of the time leading up to the filming of The Porter . He describes those adven- tures as being immersive undertakings, cultural and com- munal, such as a two-week stay in a Buddhist monastery where he took a vow of silence for the duration. And in addition to his travels, he says, “I was writing books, but I moved toward film because nobody would be- lieve what was in my books. I needed something to prove that what I do is real and to get my [content] out there.” In his first documentary endeavor, he offers that proof—figuratively in the film’s real-life portrayal of the skilled Nepali porter, and literally in that Menninger in- serted himself into the society of these skilled mountain- eering professionals and carried the load alongside them. While he started out wanting to summit Everest, the work of the human powerhouses he encountered at base camp became his ultimate story. “I really got immersed to live in their shoes fully; that’s how I conceived the doc- umentary,” he says of his role trekking beside the porters, small in stature yet able to carry loads sometimes equal- ing their body weight. Most of the weight of the load is secured by a strap, called a namlo, that runs across the porter’s forehead—an especially grueling part of the ad- venture for Menninger when you see his physical struggle and the expression on his face as he adjusts his balance to the extreme weights of the daily loads. He also strives to heft as much and even more than his experienced col- leagues, which is a crazy-scary-cool feat to behold.
But most of all for the viewer, The Porter offers an in-depth look at the strength, endurance, day-to-day fortitude, and close community of the porters as they navigate treacherous terrain, incredible path steepness, and altitude and climate extremes for 6-8 hours a day, months out of each year. And at the end of the day, they sleep in crowded huts with no heat and sometimes only the ground beneath them, Menninger right at their side. In a manner somewhat reminiscent of director Chloe Zhao’s 2021 Academy Award-winning Nomad- land , Menninger, a player from the outside world, has inserted himself into the world of his subjects. And so his subjects and his filmic recounting of their lives, shot by cameraman Babin Dulai, become intertwined as he liter- ally attempts to walk their path. Leading up to the filming, Menninger taught himself Nepali. “I can devote myself really intensely to one thing,” he describes of the two-month process. “So, I taught myself on my computer in an apartment in DC,” where he was living at the time. But by far the strongest lesson Menninger took away from his time conceiving of and filming The Porter was how devastatingly hard his subjects work—oftentimes with little recognition from recreational climbers and even smaller pay. In a scene at the end of the documen- tary, Menninger and the other porters stand on day 12 following the base camp climb—awaiting pay from the companies that employ the porters and profit from their services. This raw glimpse into the plight of the por- ter, whose incredible labor supports their families, has generated newfound social awareness and has made an impact that the young filmmaker didn’t fully anticipate. In its wake, The Porter drew recognition by the UIAA, the International Climbing and Moutaineering Federa- tion, and then helped create its new Mountain Worker Initiative that supports the safety and sustainability of vital climbers, such as those at Everest. “There was the weight of the social impact I was dealing with,” Menninger describes of his experience in Nepal, his return to the United States, and to the start of post-production on the documentary. In addition, although his father was once in the film industry and had an Avid system at the ready, Menninger
handled editing and post-production with no film school training to lean on. “I was learning editing, color grad- ing, audio mixing,” he describes. While concurrently, “The film grew and the social impact grew, and it just took over my whole life. It was new to me how consum- ing this work can be.” With the 2020 documentary now on the film festival circuit, Menninger has recharged and is looking for his next opportunity. “I’d like to transition The Porter into an immersive journalism series, but to have some support and to work with other people instead of doing everyone’s role,” he says. “I’m limited in my capacity. I’m learning.” He wonders, “What could we do with a whole team?” For Nate Menninger today, there’s a true appreciation of the very real issues in our world, and he intends to put a lens to them. This raw glimpse into the plight of the porter, whose incredible labor supports their families, has generated newfound social awareness and has made an impact that the young filmmaker didn’t fully anticipate.
@nathanieljmenninger | @uiaamountains
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