New-age Sri Lankan cinema and film-makers

In this Cultural Scene, I want to focus on the emergence and evolution of Sri Lankan cinema and look at some future prospects. This very brief and incomplete piece will only capture Sinahala language films made in Sri Lanka.

Since 'Kadawunu Poronduwa' (Broken Promise), the first Sinhala language film was screened in Colombo in 1947, Sri Lankan cinema (Sinhala Cinema) has evolved from formulaic films modelled on popular North Indian movies and evolved as those that deal with complex socio-cultural issues of our society.

In the first following nine years of the history of Sri Lankan cinema, the usual tradition of producing films in South India continued following the recipes of the conventional Indian cinema. However, this tradition was broken in 1956 when Rekawa (The Line of Destiny) was made by Lester James Peries who quit a career in the Government Film Unit. Rekava highlighted that a film is a visual medium confirming what Lester himself has stated about films: "... in film the visual language is more important than the verbal. A film-maker must master the language and syntax of the film. What is most necessary for a film-maker is empathy, the ability to empathise with his subject."

Rekawa

Rekawa was the first Sinhala language film to be shot completely out of a studio setting. However, since Rekawa was produced, Sinhala language films continued to follow storylines and plots borrowed from India up through the early 1960s despite the production of good Sri Lankan films such as Sandesaya and Kurulu Bedda.

Lester James Peries again contributed to the development of Sri Lankan cinema in 1964 with Gamperaliya based on Martin Wickramasinghe's novel. It received praise and prestigious international awards for portraying the Sinhala culture and was also hailed by critics and audiences alike. Following this breakthrough, several artistic Sinhala films were made in the late 1960s including Sath Samudura (Seven Oceans) by Prof. Siri Guanasinghe who continued the realistic Sinhala cinematic tradition. During the 1970s the first phase of new talents emerged while commercially oriented cinema continued to be influenced by Indian films. The first phase of new talents included Vasantha Obeysekera who followed up his well-received debut Ves Gatho with successful films culminating with Palangetiyo produced in 1979. Another key director who emerged during this period was Dharmasena Pathiraja who captured the changing issues of the Sri Lankan society by examining life of city and educated youth in films such as Bambaru Awith and Ahas Gauwa. Poet and artist Mahagamasekera's sole film, Thunman Handiya based on his own novel is also a noteworthy Sri Lankan film released in 1970.

Ms Sumithra Peries who was a part of the production team of Rekawa also emerged during the 1970s with films such as Gehanu Lamai and Ganga Addara looking at the troublesome and conflicting stories of women in Sri Lankan society.

Over the next few decades, film directors including Tissa Abeysekara, Prasanna Vithanage and Vimukthi Jayasundara have brought a breath of fresh air into Sinhala cinema. Vithanage's controversial film Purahanda Kaluwara (Death on a Full Moon Day) is among one of the key films made in Sri Lankan focusing on the life of ordinary villages and how their life was changed as a result of the ethnic war.

In 2005 Vimukthi Jayasundara directed his first film, Sulanga Enu Pinisa and won the prestigious Camera d'Or for best first film at the Cannes Film Festival.

Following the era of foundation realistic Sinhala language films, contemporary artistic film has changed its course towards more radical applications in the medium and deals with a gamut of socio-cultural issues. If Dr. Lester James Peries' Gamperaliya depicts Sri Lankan village life, Prasanna Vithanage's "Akasa Kusum" (Flowers of the Sky), though subtle and extremely shrewd in its depiction, deals with myriad of issues covering the overarching influence of globalization on Sri Lankan way of life, complex socio-cultural set up in the metropolis Colombo and changing moral values of a new society. It focuses on the life of Sandhya Rani an ageing film star who was once the darling of the silver screen. Having lost her fame and fortune in a changing world, she leads a private life in obscurity.

Contemporary film-makers

Among the contemporary film-makers are Asoka Handagama, Prasanna Vithanage and Vimukthi Jayasundara and Enokaa Sathyangani Keerthinanda. Young film-maker Boodi Keerthisena has introduced entirely novel application to Sri Lankan cinema. His films such as Mille Soya, and Sihina Deshayen deal with different issues rarely dealt with by film-makers of the 1960s. Particularly, the film "Mille Soya" deals with the issue of illegal migration of a new generation of Sri Lankan youth. The film depicts the dangerous and hazardous journey by a young Sri Lankan group to Europe in search of Mille (100 Lares now Euro).

However, Sri Lankan film-makers have rarely ventured into such new areas based on real life issues and harsh realities in contemporary milieu. Prasanna Vithanage and Italian director Uberto Pasolini's "Machan" also deals with the same issue.

Prasanna Vithanage's creations such as Sisila Gini Ganee (1992), Anantha Rathriya (1995), Pawru Walalu and Purahanda Kaluwara are on diverse themes. Though Prasanna has devised his own narrative style and a grammar of cinema, he deals with contemporary issues such as social cost of conflict and politics. In Vimukthi Jayasundara's film Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land), the story line of the film can be summed up as a film representing the misery that was created as a result of a long standing of civil war in Sri Lanka. It brought rare honour to Sri Lanka by receiving the Camera d'Or for the Best First Film at the 58th edition of the Cannes International Film Festival, and also a Jury award at the prestigious Asian Film Festival in New Delhi.

New-age film-makers

The film narrates a story of a village sandwiched between armed forces and terrorists. One of the predominant characteristics of Vimukthi's applications of cinema is that his penchant for close-ups and rather bizarre landscapes. Sulanga Enu Pinisa deals with the universal theme of war. In a way, the carefully edited scenes such as bizarre landscape without a soul are juxtaposed with the every-day uncertainties of the population and their mindsets. Characters' behaviour in the film is justifiable given the volatile politico-military situation in the area. The forces deployed en mass to eradicate the terrorist also become part and parcel of the life.

One of the important film-makers of the contemporary Sri Lankan cinema is Asoka Handagama. Film critics often labelled Handagama's creations as 'controversial' although they deal with issues which can be termed as unconventional or non-traditional from a broader perspective. His creations such as Sanda Dadayama, Chanda Kinnarie, Me Mage Sandai, Thani Tatuwen Piyabanna and Aksharaya deals with diverse issues which are often thought to be out of scope by founder Sri Lankan film-makers.

For instance, his films deal with issues such as incest and abortion. They also question conventional and widely held societal norms such as the ideal of masculinity. For instance, the protagonist in his film Thani tatuwen Piyabanna (Flying with one wind) is a woman posing as a man. She works in a garage along with a host of male workers. She smokes cigarettes and walks even in the dead night clad in a sarong. She lives with a woman who really believes that she, the lead role, is a man. Handagama's latest film Aksharaya deals with incest, an issue, though denied, however, exists in Sri Lanka. Handagama exposes the proverbial underbelly of society. He has developed a diction and syntax of cinema appropriate for the subjects at hand.

Satyajit Maitipe's Borediya Pokuna (Lotus pond) and Enokaa Satyangani Keerthinanda's Sulang Kirillie also expanded the scope of Sri Lankan cinema in its particular ways. Thanuj Anawaratna's "Nisala Gira "deals with the drug trafficking. The film also depicts life in prison.

Internationally acclaimed Chandran Rathnam's newest film The Road from Elephant Pass is also based on the 30 years of ethnic civil war that ravaged the country. The film depicts the journey from Elephant Pass to Colombo of a Sri Lankan Army Captain Wasantha Ratnayake and 'defecting' informant LTTE cadre Kamala Velayudan. The film is based on Nihal De Silva's Gratiaen Award winning novel that focuses on human relationships that transcends artificial barriers of ethnicity, class, and creed as the core of the theme. (The author of the novel was killed in a landmine laid by the LTTE in the Wilpattu National park in 2006, denying him the chance of seeing the re-creation of his novel on screen which is faithful to the original.)The film has been entered to the Golden Globes "Best Foreign Language Film" category.

One of the important aspects of the new-age film-makers in Sri Lanka is that their innate ability to capture and re-interpret the changing milieu and hitherto unforeseen social changes and values in Sri Lankan society.

Emerging realities

The culminate effect of free market economy and globalization has changed the contemporary socio-economic landscape beyond imagination. Sprawling free trade zones and tourism industry have created sub-cultures with their own ethos. Cityscape has also changed with night clubs and Karaoke clubs leading to the birth of diverse sub-cultures outside the mainstream dominant Sinhalese Buddhist society. The protracted conflict which was brought to an end with the defeat of terrorists by the Sri Lankan Army, has, for the first time, created a community of disabled soldiers, large number of orphans and Internally Displaced Peoples generating host of socio-economic issues which were unforeseeable in the 1960s.

The growing Sri Lankan diaspora of both Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese is another potential area, the Sri Lankan new-age film-makers could venture into. Loss of inheritance, longing for the 'Isle of Memory' against the busy metropolises of the world and their incessant struggle to carve out a unique identity in their domiciled countries are some of the issues that Sri Lankan diaspora confronts with. In my personal view, representation of life of millions of diasporic Sri Lankans with firm roots in their native land, but now living in far off places such as Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Europe and North America may have millions of new tales and story lines to share with and their stories may be an unexplored diamond mine. But the question is whether our Sri Lankan film-makers have resources to venture into such a new and rich area of film production on their own.