Bonsoir focuses on film education

By Anuradha KODAGODA

'Bonsoir', is a famous TV program which enriched the local audience with French cinema, art and culture. Gradually it turned more in to promoting local artistes too especially those who are in the field of short film making. Though the new trends of Bonsoir TV show was able to capture more local communities rather than the English speaking communities in the country, it is quite noticeable that the TV show is no more on air. However, with the Bonjour Cinema Festival- French Spring which concluded yesterday could rekindle the name of Bonsoir with its new approach of promoting young short filmmakers of the country. The Program Director of Bonsoir, Anoma Rajakaruna spoke on the classic TV show now turned into a cinema magazine which could gain significant recognition of its audience.

“The Bonsoir is a worldwide popular TV show which promotes art and culture of France. Bonsoir TV show is mostly promoted in French colonies and even though Sri Lanka was never a French colony Bonsoir was still shown in Sri Lanka due to the close relationship Sri Lanka has with France culturally and politically. However, due to the significant increase of internet usage around the globe, television lost its uniqueness because people could access internet at any time they wanted for any kind of information within a few seconds.

This was a common danger for Bonsoir too because unlike earlier, people got an easier way to know about French operas, French new wave of cinema or famous tourist hotspots of France rather than waiting for a week till Bonsoir comes on TV. As we know, television policies of most of the developed States are pretty much futuristic. Therefore, with this changing trend of television, Canal France International which produce and distribute Bonsoir programs free of charge, changed their vision into promote the art and cultural education among youth generation of these countries. Through this new concept they facilitate to promote skills in story telling methods, short documentary and short film making among the youth. Therefore, the Bonsoir team with the collaboration of Embassy of France dedicated the past few years to conduct many workshops to promote these skills among the youth in the country,” starting the conversation Anoma said.

“For past 26 years, Sri Lankan communities recognised Bonsoir as a TV show about the French art and culture. However, in addition to promoting French art and culture, a few years back we dedicated 10 minutes from Bonsoir TV show to promote upcoming short film makers in Sri Lanka. The main reason why we wanted to add this segment was, with the revolution of digital technology there’s a positive trend created for short films. Before the digital revolution, cinema was an industry with a high budget involvement. Most of the filmmakers considered short film as a prior exercise before their debut into feature film. This erroneous guideline was provided by the National Film Corporation because they promote a short film as an entry point for a feature film,” starting the conversation Anoma said. “However, with the arrival of digital cinema, it opened a new avenue for young filmmakers, those who stuck with their cinema creations due to high budget involvement.

Earlier, even for a short film, same technology was used as for a feature film which cost an enormous amount of money. Therefore, the digital revolution could boom the short films as another independent industry rather than being only an entry point for feature films. However, even though short films could capture its identity as an independent art form, there wasn’t any trend or space created for short films. Therefore, a few years back we held a short film festival which was organised by Bonsoir. The main intention was to persuade young filmmakers to come up with their short film creations by identifying it as an independent art form and also to create a platform to showcase their creativity,” she said.

“Most of the times telecommunication medias have a habit of promoting only the stars without bothering to discover young talents in any medium of arts. But, for me it was an essential need to create a space for young short filmmakers to talk about their productions and that was the main reason to include the 10 minutes segment on Bonsoir TV show which was celebrated at that time.

We were able to introduce quite a decent number of short filmmakers through this segment and that was not only restricted to Colombo but out of Colombo too, especially from the North and the East,” she said.

“However, this year onwards we plan to conduct Bonsoir Master Class which allowed young filmmakers to attend one day workshops with veteran filmmakers of the country.

Therefore, as a starting point in December last year we did a Master Class conducted by Vimukthi Jayasundara who had much international recognition and awards. He underwent cinema education at the well-known France cinema academy. In parallel to the Master Class we launched Agenda 14 film magazine and Agenda 14 Film festival last December, receiving a significant feedback from young filmmakers and cinemagoers of the country.

So far we have conducted many film studies workshops in Trincomalee and Ratnapura which we are planning to expand to many cities in the country soon,” she said. “The second Master Class we are planning to hold on June 24 at BMICH which will be conducted by Ashoka Handagama, a veteran filmmaker in the country.

The second Master Class is organised in parallel to Bonjour Cinema, French Spring festival in Colombo which started on June 16 and concluded successfully. Therefore, we hope to continue Bonsoir, adapting to the needs of the changing world’s youth requirements in a more fruitful manner which we have done so far,” she concluded.