|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 27 April 2003 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Malini : Her best is yet to come by Jayanthi Liyanage After 14 stage plays in five years (1963-67), 142 films in 35 years (1968-2003) directing four of them, and 16 tele-dramas in 19 years (1984-2003) directing 10, Malini Senehelatha Fonseka, the irrepressibly dynamic local Queen of the Silver Screen, flashes her famous disarming, yet resolute smile, and implies that her best may be yet to come. "Humans cannot live without hope and ambition to nurture their future," she pronounces with determination. "The moment these felicitation ceremonies are over, you will find me back at shooting."
What else can you expect from an inexhaustible cinema personality who has won the highest number of awards ever in the industry, (no less than 50, including an impressive 32 for films), and is also the first acting artiste to win an international award (for Pathiraja's "Eya Dan Loku Lamayek" at the 9th International Moscow Film Festival). Adding to the feat, she has also been the only local to be awarded with an OCIC award for a trilogy of films in a single year, not only once but twice - in 1977 for "Eya Dan Loku Lamayek", "Siripala saha Ran Menika" and "Deviyani Oba Koheda" and in 1981 for "Baddegama", "Induta Mal Mitak" and "Soldadu Unnehe". The seventies decade, a springboard for Malini, the actress, was also the spring of the Sinhala cinema, maturing with her. The decade saw the nationalisation of the film industry under the monopolistic control of the National Film Corporation, ushering experimentation of cinematic language, debate on film as aesthetic form and industry and creations 'alternative' to the traditional formulae, sharpened with social realism. "Looking back, I realise that the industry and I grew together," Malini reflects. "That was the era when we escaped fully from our Indian cinematic inheritance and made films which we could truly call our own, helped by directors such as Lester James Pieris, Dharmasena Pathiraja and Sugathapala Senarath Yapa. My cinematic voyage turned decisively with 'Nidhanaya' and I am glad I was part of the over-all endeavour to form a film industry of our own," she says. "I did not curtail myself to films of either pure entertainment, or of realistic depth, and did full justice to my character roles of both types." This she feels is the reason why she is hailed as the "Queen" surpassing many other "leading ladies" to reign on screen in different film realms of Indian emulation, popularism and realism. And the industry welcomed her arrival not as a "celluloid queen" but as a skilled, experienced and disicplined worker much awaited by the industry for its future survival, notes Dhammika Dissanayake, Secretary, Malini Felicitations Committee, in the Malini Fonseka Felicitation Volume, to be released on April 30 at the BMICH. "Cinema needs to be both an industry and an art to survive," says Malini, referring to the post-2000 liberalised film industry with competition coming from Indian and Western imports. "While we employ art films to develop our cinema, we also need simple films catering to popular tastes, to generate money to sustain the industry. Right now, we do not have a stable market for local films as entertainment is the last in the expenditure list of the masses for whom food, shelter and education is the high priority, and producing a Sinhala film to compete with the cheap foreign imports is a gamble of uncertain returns which many don't want to take." But, "as long as there are Sinhala people, there will be a Sinhala cinema," Malini offers hope. "For, how can we import Sinhala films?" Having completed acting in "Adaraniya Wassanaya", directed by Senesh Bandara Dissanayake and produced by Upul Shantha Sannasgala, she now awaits screening of Lester James's "Wekande Walawwa", H.D. Premaratne's "Udu Sulanga", Jayantha Das Perera's "Prathi Rawaya" and Givantha Artha Sad's "Muthu Etaya Modayo". "Felicitating the achievements of Malini is a means of educating our present day young generation of the need to salvage the Sinhala film industry," says Dhammika Dissanayake, adding that as a first step to reduce the dependency of local artistes on the corporate and political world, the proceeds of the film festival and the high-profile ceremony on April 30 at the BMICH, will be used to commence a scholarship scheme for students of cinema and the Malini Fonseka Fund to assist undergraduates of mass communication. A Performing Arts Research Centre is also envisaged bridging the East and the West to enrich the meagre resources available to the disciples of performing arts in the country. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
