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Sunday, 31 October 2004 |
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Space : An exchange of vision and expertise Space in /on/ within/ between, an unusual exhibition examining the concept of space, was held at the British Council recently.
The exhibition was the outcome of artlink, a collaboration between the British Council (Sri Lanka), Goethe Institute, Alliance Francaise and Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts, which was co-sponsored by the Lunuganga Trust and Hotel Serendib. The project was aimed at attracting young, innovative amateur designers and visual artists looking to cross boundaries between art, architecture and design. Two main objectives of this year's project were the exchange of vision and expertise between Sri Lanka and Europe and encouraging creative new uses of diverse materials found at the workshop site.The artlink workshop was held at Lunuganga, (the residence of late Geoffrey Bawa, who was Sri Lanka's most famous) from September 27 to October 6, and comprised 13 local participants (from the University of Moratuwa and Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts) along with 4 foreign artists from the UK, Germany and France. During the 10-day period the participants had the opportunity of sharing their knowledge and experimenting with the possibility of using manual labour and skills in order to attempt to work with the material found from the wonderful surroundings Lunuganga residence. Pradeepanjalee VIII at Lionel Wendt
A crusader for creating an alternative music plane with a Sri Lankan identity, sitarist Pradeep Ratnayake, will hold his next recital Pradeepanjalee VIII at the Lionel Wendt Theatre on November 9 at 7.00 p.m. The concert is sponsored by the United States-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission. The Ambassador of the United States Jeffrey Lunstead will be the chief guest on this occasion. This is an outcome of an endeavour to bring together different cultures in his compositions. Pradeep Ratnayake will feature his usual compliment of oriental musicians, Upula Madushanka and Chandralal Amerakoon (tablas), Piyasara Shilpadhipathi - Sri Lankan Percussion, Udaya - Kandyan drums, Sarath Kumara (flute) and Madhavi Shilpadhipathi (voice), from the western music field, the musicians will join him in the fusion compositions, where Harsha Makalanda (piano), Alston Joachim (bass guitar), Shiraaz Nooramith (acoustic drums), Lakshman Joseph de Saram (violin) and Grant Chamberlain (saxophone). The compositions include spring based on the Indian raga, Bahar the fusion. 'A Wine Coloured Moon' with sitar, bass, piano and acoustic drums. American compositions arranged by Harsha Makalanda and Grant Chamberlain with George Gershwins, 'fascinating rhythm' and saxophonist John Coltrane's 'Naima'. Admission to the concert will be on the basis of free passes that will be available at the United States-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission at 7, Flower Terrace (off Flower Road), Colombo 7 from Monday, November 1. Critic's Corner Milla Soya : Paradise is greener from the other side by J. S. Tissainayagam Milla Soya (Boungiorno Italia) is about Sri Lankans forced by poverty, lawlessness and uncertainty to seek El Dorado overseas and the privations they have to undergo to achieve it, only to find the past never leaves them, and the affluent west, like every other paradise on earth, is greener from the other side.
The film, in Sinhala, (with snatches of Italian when the location shifts to Italy) and sub-titled in English, starts in a Sinhala-speaking, coastal village. Pradeep (Mahendra Perera), an amateur musician - the type you find along the semi-urban, Roman Catholic areas on the south-western coast - and Princy (Sangeetha Weeraratne) are among a group of friends from the village who decide they will not endure such deprivation any more but seek their fortune in Italy. However, there is an insurmountable problem. Asians and other coloured foreigners coming to Italy for employment are hated by the natives as intruders on the hunt for cheap jobs, and shunned by immigration authorities that see them as lawless troublemakers. Therefore this band takes what has become a beaten track. They pay an employment agent a hefty sum of money to smuggle them without papers to their destination. However, the employment agent (Ravindra Randeniya) disappears mid way, leaving them stranded in Bulgaria. Faced by such odds they use native wit, which includes negotiating with a man in Bulgaria, to take them across to Italy. Their ordeal includes climbing treacherous mountain terrain girt in snow, and losing some of their comrades to the police and to asphyxiation by travelling in a coach's airless baggage compartment. Once in Italy, they find the reception is not as warm as they expect. Jealousy, infidelity and friction arising from living in a community on the downside of society, makes life as cheerless as what they had lived in Sri Lanka. Life for Pradeep is dreary but endurable. However, ghosts from his past in Sri Lanka are not easily banished. They haunt him throughout and compel him to make the single-most important decision he has to take when overseas - to return. The film delineates starkly the consequences of modernisation and the debilitating effect it has on human beings. It is a statement on all Sri Lankans, but especially on the underprivileged, which, thanks to the open economy and the invasion of all types of influences and gadets are told of the myriad opportunities available to them, but barred by cruel circumstances from using those. The gulf between opportunity and achievement leads to lassitude, ceaseless planning and daydreaming, which are well portrayed by Pradeep and his friends. But the effects of the global economy do not stop at making healthy, able-bodied young men sit around unemployed, drinking and smoking pot. It strikes at the very heart of living, on a society's sense of community and cohesiveness. Milla Soya explores this theme in two related ways - through the portrayal of unremitting and violent conflict, and by what would, in conventional terms, be regarded as lawlessness. Conflict is seen at different levels. Violence at an Interpersonal level is seen between Pradeep and his brother (played by Lakshman Mendis). His brother believes Pradeep is ne'er-do-well who spends his time doing the unproductive work of a musician. When Pradeep compounds this by brushing with the law, his brother has had enough. He assaults Pradeep and throws him out of the house. Interpersonal conflict create unpleasantness between those crossing to Italy when adversity overtakes them. It mars relationships in Italy too when Pradeep's love for Princy upsets the friendship between him and her brother (played by Kamal Addararachchi), leading to fisticuffs. Conflict is also explored in terms of political violence. Factionalism during electioneering breeds conflict between different groups in the village, climaxing in a death that makes Pradeep decide to return home. Politics cannot be removed from sleaze, corruption and violence that go to make people like Anton (Anthony Surendra) rich on ill-gotten wealth. Third, the film brings out the ethnic and religious conflicts in our midst. Though the village is not set in the war zone, there are constant references to the war. One is by the sailor friend of Pradeep's. However, the references are matter-of-fact and not with the emotion that stereotyped members of the armed forces speak about their dedication to fight to save the motherland. But the war is palpable enough when a bomb explodes, killing people and rendering surrounding buildings smouldering wreckages. Religious conflict in Sri Lanka, on the other hand, is not treated in the same matter-of-fact way. Princy's brother opposes her relationship with Pradeep because she is a Christian and Pradeep, Buddhist. The director brings out the irony of the situation because Princy's brother and Pradeep are good friends and they both come from a village where there is religious harmony. However, in Italy, when it comes to a love affair between Pradeep and Princy, her brother - who, by the way, is very unchristian in all what he does - opposes the relationship. It goes to show how puritanical, intolerant and xenophobic diasporic communities become. The conflict is not only seen, it is also heard. The language Keerthisena uses in the dialogue is terse, violent and littered with obscenities. In fact most of the time it is spat out rather than clearly enunciated. Finally there is conflict associated in the trade the villagers ply for a living. It is here that violent conflict meshes with lawlessness, a factor mentioned above as a consequence arising from the disintegrating communal ties brought about by modernisation. Pradeep's mother (played by Veena Jayakody) survives by distilling moonshine. So do other families. Moonshine leads to constant skirmishes with the law. What is lawlessness? Why do people get on the wrong side of the law? Right through the film Keerthisena keeps probing the question. It is not that those who indulge in lawlessness are evil men and women. It is that the villagers have to sell moonshine to live. Unless a risky operation by boat is undertaken to transport hooch in defiance of the police, home fires will not burn. To the policemen, the villagers are indulging in an illegal act, but that is how the community survives in a world where everything has its price. |
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