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| Sunday, 17 August 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Inoka Sathyanganie : Bucking convention in life and art
With her maiden production 'Sulang Kirilli' Inoka Sathyanganie leads a new generation of women film makers in Sri Lanka, and creates a lead character as indomitable as herself. Jayanthi Liyanage interviewed her for the Sunday Observer soon after the film's preview at the Regal cinema. Q: Your film is a biting critique of the local abortion law. Its theme in a nutshell is, "If you breathe, what will happen to me? If you don't breathe, what will happen to me?" referring to how the future of the unmarried pregnant Rathi hangs on the slender thread of the fate of the unborn foetus. What is the social impact your film seeks to create? A: At present, we have no social force or institution that would accept responsibility for women like Rathi. All the people involved in Rathi's dilemma are in a terrible quandary as they are at a dead end, with no way out in the present legal and cultural set up. Rathi can neither abort, nor give birth to her child. The onset of free economy after 1977 overturned our entire social structure. Everyone freely went for what they want without a proper social, legal and political infrastructure to buttress their activities. All of them lost their soul in the process of searching for it. Q: Does your film offer a solution to this problem?
A: An artiste tries to send signals to open up the minds of the public to freely discuss an issue. The close of the film shows Rathi swimming upstream through her adversities and give birth to her child. At this climax, I break her reverie, or nightmare, to bring her back to the reality. I end the film in that way because I do not want Rathi to be a heroine. Then the audiences would happily depart from the theatre and forget the gravity of the issue. Life is not that simple. In a country where 1000-2000 abortions take place daily, all of us are responsible for Rathi's predicament, as its citizens. This is murder and we are losing human beings. As all these abortions take place after the third month of pregnancy, the risk to the mother is enormous. I do not ask to legalise abortion but I believe that the deprivation of our young people from a proper sexual education is a violation of their fundamental human rights. The anti-AIDS campaign's former slogan was, "stick to one partner." Now their call is to "wear a condom." This clearly shows that in our society, the former is not always a reality. Our youngsters must run with the competitive world tide where their day is spent from morning to night in one class or other and parents are missing from homes till late at night in the race for better finances. These young people should know the basics of sexuality to face the new world with the capability of protecting themselves from harm. Q: We notice your film is rated as an "X" film. A: While I am trying to convey the message of the need for sexual education for our youngsters, the Censor Board has given the film the "X" certificate. That will prevent the very ones who need this message from coming to the theatre. I was careful not to create any nude scenes and I will raise my voice and ask the society to decide. My message to parents is come and see this film and decide whether you want to make available this experience to your children. Q: Throughout the film, you use symbols extensively and very effectively. One example is that when Rathi attempts to burn letters from Shantha, she notices that black ants have spawned eggs on the paper and refrains from doing so. A: I was not concerned about visual beauty but the content of the film and I was very particular about drawing out the embedded message from the visuals. An artiste cannot remain deaf and blind to social problems and has an obligation to negotiate with the society to unburden it, with his or her piece of art. My film is a contrast of reality and dreams, interspersed with highly sensitive symbols as this is how a film maker differs from a documentary maker. The international film festivals are specifically mindful of how a film maker uses cinematic language through different cultural contexts, to produce a language and a universal theme common to all. Q: You stray from the general trend of portraying the woman as a helpless victim of society, to show Rathi as discovering courage to make her own decisions for her life. Do you believe that women should make their own choices to be powerful catalysts in changing unjust social attitudes and discriminating laws? A: Yes, of course. That is why I named this film, the Wind Bird. The ending shows a young girl playing with a wind flower which turns with the wind and stops turning when there is no wind. When the wind blows very fast, the wind flower is blown out of the child's hand. Rathi catches it and shows the child how she can turn it with the breath blown from her own mouth. She hands the wind flower to the child who is happy that she could be in control of its play. Similarly, without being dragged to destruction by the social tide, we, the citizens can control this tide through our efforts. I am happy that 28 years after Sumithra Peiris began directing films, I was able to bring out my first film, representing the new women generation of film makers. Yet, male artistes do not like to consider a young female as a leader. I had to ignore and struggle against such attitudes. If I was not strong minded enough to make my own decisions regardless of consequences, I would have left the film industry many years ago. I wrote the script of "Sulang Kirilli" in the first month I left my marriage and moved to a separate home as I did not want to wallow in self-pity but give birth to a new woman who can breathe on her own. Q: What can we expect from you in future? A: I am starting my next film, "Sanda Malak" (Blossoms of the Moon), in December. It discusses the sexual rights of the South Asian married woman and how she becomes a "door mat" within marriage. ***** Rathi cries out on behalf of all unmarried mothers "His father does not want him born alive. The law does not want him born dead. Why in the name of God, cannot the law impress that fact on his father? Why should it punish me, and me alone? Is it because I am his mother?" This deafening logic Rathi cries out for the whole world to hear, in the film "Sulang Kirilli" (The Wind Bird), has been expressed before, by many an unmarried pregnant woman in our urban and rural societies. Yet, this reproach remains to date, a senseless whimper, falling on deaf ears, or ears insentizised to the "imperfections" of the human mind and body, by the brutality, or in stronger words, the deformity, of conventional notions of social acceptability. Inoka Sathyanganie's very first cinematic direction, "Sulang Kirilli", the only Sri Lankan film to have made it to the competitive finals of the renowned 'A Grade' Tokyo International Film Festival, succeeds in exposing the incongruity of imposing false human-drawn boundaries for human behaviour, and prepares a case for redefining a more human-friendly and meaningful society.When Rathi finally stops comprehending a broken image through her splintered mirror and moves on to secure a new mirror showing a wholesome Rathi, so do we. |
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