By Marion Filler
The hometown crowd turned out in force Sunday for Maggie Doyne and Between the Mountain and the Sky, a documentary about love, loss and resilience at her home and school for children in Nepal.
“This is my heart, this is my home, you are my people,” Doyne told the packed Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown after the 94-minute love fest filmed and directed by her husband, Jeremy Power Regimbal.
“It’s absolute magic, I started out as a babysitter for many of you, maybe you’re here tonight. My teachers are all here, my board members, my friends, all of my mentors,” said Doyne, who, like many in the audience, dabbed at tears during an emotional afternoon.
Nearly a decade in the making, Between the Mountain and the Sky contrasts the spectacular beauty of the Himalayan nation against the blight of extreme poverty.
When Doyne first traveled to Nepal in 2005, her gap year after Mendham High School, she saw children on the roadside, living under tarps and cracking rocks for pennies a day. Many were orphans, victims of 11 years of civil war.
Within a year, brimming with optimism, Doyne returned to New Jersey to cash in her baby sitting money and buy land in Nepal for a school. She also founded the BlinkNow Foundation, through which she continues to pursue financial support to sustain her dream. More than $200,000 was contributed by attendees on Sunday.
The children steal the show as the movie follows several rescues of abandoned youngsters who are brought to the Kopila Valley Home and School. Fear is soon replaced by the camaraderie of a new family. Kopila grows rapidly, with invaluable help from Tope Bahadur Malla, a Nepali and an orphan himself.
Blessed with endless energy and love to spare, Doyne fills the role of mother to approximately 50 children. Hugs and kisses abound, everybody is happy, safe and well fed.
at MPAC screening of ‘Between the Mountain to the Sky,’ Nov. 3, 2024. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Then Ravi comes along. He’s a three-pound foundling left to die on the street and brought to Kopila. We witness his transformation into a happy, pudgy little fellow adored by everyone — especially Doyne.
But joy is short lived. Ravi gets out of his playpen, escapes through an open gate and drowns in a sewage pond. Doyne is devastated, and taken back to New Jersey by her mother and sister where she tries to heal. There are people who never get over their sadness, says Doyne in the film; she does not want to be one of them.
Brokenhearted but determined, she goes alone to a meeting in Los Angeles, where she had planned to take Ravi with her.
It was a life-changing decision. As fate would have it, she encounters filmmaker Jeremy Regimbal. They start a relationship in the film, and continue in real life. When Regimbal follows Doyne to Nepal he is captivated in more ways than one.
He described the experience to the audience, with Doyne by his side.
“At first I thought, oh gee, maybe (Nepal) would be a good short film.” It was more than he bargained for. After nine years and 70 terabytes of video recording, “here we are. I followed my heart, and this is my love letter to her.”
“The takeaway from the movie is that when you’re born into a place of safety, love and community, you have that inside of you at the cellular level and you can pay that back,” said Doyne. “That’s the gift the community gave me.”
At the conclusion of the film and a rousing standing ovation, the community continued to give a lot more. Donations were livestreamed on a large screen and kept rolling upward with the last total fluctuating around $680,000, including a $450,000 match from unnamed backers.
Louise Murray enjoyed the show. “I thought it was captivating and just so challenging, but my big question is when does Maggie get to sleep?”
Linda Hellstrom, founder of the Morristown Festival of Books, first saw Between the Mountain and the Sky earlier this year at the Telluride Film Festival, where it won both the Audience Choice and Student Choice awards.
“I think it’s a wonderful story. When you film real love like this, then it tells its own story, and it’s a powerful one. And it’s real. As he (Regimbal) said, they never doctored any of it. There’s just that love and joy. I cried all over again. I cried twice.”
Hans Dekker, president of the Community Foundation of New Jersey, and his wife Ruth have visited Doyne’s school and children’s home in Nepal. “It was just remarkable how cohesively everyone got along,” Dekker said.
Doyne was greeted afterwards by a Mendham throng that included her former teachers and even people she once babysat. One of them, Caroline Hall, has vivid memories from when she was 8 years old.
“She was the most fun and most loving person,” Hall, now 30, said of her sitter. The documentary “made me cry a lot,” Hall added, after hugging Doyne.
In the lobby, a boutique of handloomed items was surrounded by eager shoppers.
Made by women empowered by the Kopila Valley School, the colorful dinner napkins, shawls, bags and more are available at Blinknow.org. For those who missed Between the Mountain and the Sky this time, the website will post information about future showings when available.
Doyne, who has written a book about Kopila and been recognized by the Dalai Lama and as a CNN Hero, said she hopes the film encourages others around the world to emulate the approach that has made her school and children’s home successful.
“It’s really just about children, and when we raise children with love and nurturing and having their basic needs met, they go on and take on the most pressing challenges of their community, their countries and the world. I think that’s what BlinkNow stands for,” she said.
Moderator Matt Goldman, co-founder of the Blue Man Group and a longtime supporter, asked how Nepal’s civil war, COVID and the migrant crisis have affected the nonprofit. Doyne sounded unfazed:
“The world is going through some pretty dismal times, and the solution is pretty simple: Take care of kids, get them into school, love them up and raise them and launch them into the world.”
