Asoka Handagama directs Tamil film:

Iranian cinema something to go by

By Anuradha KODAGODA

The fact that Asoka Handagama is one of the legendary filmmakers in the country is no hyperbole. He is one of the great artistes of our time. In a way he has become the icon of the alternative trend of Sri Lankan cinema because of his highly controversial themes by which he always brings novelty to the Sri Lankan silver screen. The controversial approach of his cinematic expressions, always polarised his audiences or the critics into two extremes either they love it or hate it.

Although he holds a responsible position in the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, throughout his cinematic career he has proved that his interest in cinema will never fade away. However, unlike the young filmmakers and most of the artistes, he is free from the struggle to survive financially while trying to retain their passion and love towards arts.

Since Handagama was my "superman' from my childhood, it was my desire to talk to him on his recent film Ini Avan (Him hereafter) and his current viewpoint on cinema.

Handagama's latest Tamil film Ini Avan depicts the lives of the people in the north after the final battle at Nandikadal lagoon. Compared to his previous films, though there's no such novelty created by the film, it appears that Handagama has tried to turn his journey or rather retreat from his cinema somewhere else the direction of which is not clear - but surely not where he wanted to locate his cinema before.

Following are excerpts of an interview with Handagama on his new film. He says:

"I have been working with the Tamil people by mixing with them for quite a long time. For example when opening the A9 road a few years back, I was one of the artistes who joined the first crew to go to Jaffna and capture their feelings and moods through my television series named Me paren enna.

Even after that we did many documentaries and features about the conflict issue with the Tamil community in the North and the East. Therefore, the amity I have with the Tamil community is not created overnight. My medium of expression is cinema and as I see, there is a lot of potential with Tamil youth where they can express their themes through cinema." he said starting the conversation.

"However, they have not attempted it so far. So, I have had that feeling for a long time to give an initiative for the youth in the North and the East to use cinema as a medium of expression. With that hope in my mind I did Ini Avan and the entire film was shot in North. Through Ini Avan I didn't want to discuss it. Rather, I wanted to create a dialogue about the post war condition. 'Ini Avan' is not a complicated film as my previous films. Though it is quite a straight-forward film, there are elements that you can go deeper and you may find many untold stories within it".

Q. Is portraying 'allegories' rather than people is a common fact in your films?

A.When I was writing the script, there were few characters that I wanted to keep as strangers. For example, I wanted the person who was chasing the main character, to be unknown to the audience. Even-though he is unknown, the impact he creates is vital to the entire story. During the thirty years in the North and the East, the only thing they experienced was war.

The Southern part of the country had moved far ahead during that period of time. For example, the new liberal capitalism came in and established which is still happening extremely well in the country.

This was completely a stranger to the Northern part of the country till the end of terrorism. Soon after finishing the war, the first guest to visit the Northern part of the country is this new liberal capitalism. The enormous power of this magic spell can change almost everything.

In terms of relationships, moral, cultural values, and traditions. anything can be changed by capitalism. It may introduce a new way of living. The so-called preserved culture and traditional values may change and fade away.

Nevertheless, it may be replaced with new cultures and values. The people in the Northern part of the country survived with nothing. Therefore, it is quite easy to exploit or manipulate them because they have no prior experiences or this may light up new hopes for their demolished lives which were left with nothing. Therefore, to dramatise this I wanted to use the unknown character as an allegory to portray the next challenge that they have to undergo in their lives.

Q. The film replicated popular, shallow incidents to depict years of trauma. Why?

A. There is no doubt that they have gone through many traumatic experiences during these thirty years. However, it is not my intention to recreate it which I feel, would exploit their emotions erroneously.

I don't see any importance to replicate the trauma over and over which we all well know and experienced over the past 30 years. Rather, I did not want to go into that detail but I wanted to create a story which is on a tolerable level which we all are distant and which create a platform to think about. Therefore, it is deliberately done not to bring back the trauma or the tragedy, but to reconcile and give light about the present condition.

Handagama's cinema

I admit that my cinema trend is more issue oriented. It is quite controversial when you say issue orient cinema is not a self expression. As I believe, it is also self expression. For example, it was quite a disturbing news item which made me do 'Flying with one wing' (Thani Thatuven Piyabanna).

Though it was not my experience I was shocked to hear such a story and I couldn't help myself to just ignore it but I wanted to respond to the incident through my medium of expression, which I also regard as self expression. It is same with the film 'The letter of fire' (Aksharaya).

Though it is not based on an incident, it was based on the knowledge that I gathered reading.

By creating Ini Avan also, I wanted to get involved with the Tamil community and shoot a film for them, so that it will influence them to think about their own issues and come out with their own creativity. They can do better than me since I'm distant to their people.

The next time I might come up with a completely different theme and it might be directly related to my life. I'm responding to the current cinema trend too. During the past few years there were a few films which were based on war themes, so I too wanted to touch upon the theme of war but from a different angle.

I have done everything in cinema very consciously and purposely. Therefore I have the confidence to take responsibility for my work. As Dr Lester James Peries once said when he saw the film 'This is my moon' (Me mage sandai), this film is going to be the third revolution of Sri Lankan cinema which is today a reality.

The only aspiration I had when I was doing the film 'This is my moon' was that I wanted to create a different cinema language in terms of editing, cinematography and all the other aspects by surpassing the traditional boundaries of cinema which had at that time. I think it worked out.

A scene from Ini Avan

However, when I see my cinematic career, though there were many young filmmakers who got influenced by my trend of cinema, most of them have got me wrong. They've become more radical in their creativity which could surpass the limit that I consciously held in my creativeness and most of them have erroneously used the genre.

New wave

Therefore, I deliberately wanted to turn back from that genre and when I created Ini Avan I was being very much conscious not to repeat it.

Through Ini Avan I never tried to give a solution.

But my effort is to bring some untold issues to the discussion and trigger a social and political discourse.

It is a different era that we are living in. When I think about the crisis or the hassle that I've gone through with my previous film Aksharaya, I had to rethink about the depth of my cinematic viewpoint.

I don't want to restrict my productions only to international audiences but I want to share them with people of this country too.

I believe, we have to go back to Iranian cinema where most of the movies are based on personal stories but a lot of political/cultural stories are being told within those stories, which I think is a wise attempt when considering the political/cultural backgrounds of Iran.

It is a good tactic to bring culturally or politically sensitive issues through cinema. However, nobody in our country has tried this method, so I tried it in Ini Avan which may not be a perfect effort, but to begin a novel journey in Sri Lankan cinema I tried to bring this method into my cinema too, and also to create a new wave in Sri Lankan cinema by introducing a Tamil film.

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Asoka Handagama’s latest movie, which had its international premiere at the 13th Jeonju International Film Festival- 2012, South Korea, has been picked for the ACID Cannes 2012 Program, which will be held during the International Film Festival in Cannes from May 17-26, 2012. ACID (Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion) is a Film Directors’ Association that has been promoting the diffusion of Independent films in movie theatres and encouraging debates between authors and the audience.

Every year, ACID presents nine films in Cannes during the festival. After Cannes, ACID presents the films to 40 festivals in France and abroad. The ACID Cannes program is then shown in Paris, in 30 movie theatres in the Parisian area, in the region, and in Miami (USA). Ini Avan has already been listed for many independent international festivals around the world. The film will also be released to theatres in France, by Heleoprophe Films.

Directed by Handagama, Ini Avan cast includes Darshan Dharmaraj, Niranjani Shanmugaraja, Subashini Balasubramaniun, Raja Ganeshan, Malcolm Machado and King Rathnam. Cinematography is by Channa Deshapriya, music by Kapila Poogala Arachchi, art direction by Sunil Wijerathne. For E - Culture Productions, Ini Avan is co-produced by Jagath Wellawatte and Anura Fernando.

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