Montage - Cultural paradigm | Sundayobserver.lk

Prasanna Vithanage's entry into Sinhala cinema marks a seminal stage in the evolution of contemporary Sri Lankan cinema. Vithanage has devised his own grammar and syntax in cinema which is essentially Sri Lankan yet appealing to the complex sensibilities of international cinema. The overarching influence of great filmmakers such as Lester James Peries, Satyajit Ray, Kurosawa and pioneer filmmakers of the European schools such as Krzysztof Kielowski and Andrei Tarkovsky on Prasanna's application of media, particularly, in a Sri Lankan context tackling sensitive social issues at micro and macro levels, earned his films worldwide acclaim and making them truly cultural ambassadors in the international arena. Looking at his corpus of cinema commencing with Sisila Gini Gani (Ice of Fire) to Akasa Kusum, one does observe his signature diction and the humanist approach towards the subject.

One of the significant characteristics of his application of cinema is his awareness of the contemporary issues and the sensitive way in which he deals with them. For instance, his films dealing with the conflict such as Purahanda Kaluvara and Ira Madiyama (August Sun) cinematically codifies one of the darkest periods in the contemporary history of Sri Lanka. Rudimentarily, Purahanda Kaluvara offers critical observations of the conflict from a perspective of villagers who have become involuntary party to the conflict due to abject poverty. Ira Madiyama (August Sun) chronicles the plight of the generation of Muslims who had been forcibly evicted from their traditional homeland in the North by the LTTE. The film Machan deals with the issue of migration. Machan which Vithanage co-produced was directed by the Italian, Uberto Pasolini.

Akasa Kusum deals with the personal tragedy of a female film star. However, the sub-text of the film is primarily concerned with the social consequences of the evil spirits lurking in Sri Lanka's sordid underbelly (drugs, illegal abortion, prostitution and blind ambition) and the quest for personal realization in hopeless conditions.

Vithanage is also known for working with and attracting the best in the industry. His long standing artistic relationship with classical cinematographer M.D. Mahindapala and post-modernist composers Harsha Makalanda and Lakshman Joseph de Saram have contributed greatly to Vithanage's unique interpretation of the world he sees. An unsettling cinematic view he possibly shares with the likes of Andrzej Wajda and Istvan Szabo.

In his six films so far, Vithanage has displayed a sincerity that is almost completely lacking in the mainstream of Sri Lankan cinema today. He refuses to gloss over the vices and the conundrums of a modern society in conflict, and enters into a genuine study of its individuals and their relationships with the time and the space they reluctantly find themselves in. He has up to now, steadfastly refused to bow down to the politics of the day, or the whims and fancies of commercial appeal, and will thus become one of the very few filmmakers who are likely to be relevant in years to come, remembered for the enduring artistic qualities of his films and his sensitive portrayal of the troubles of his generation.

In an exclusive interview with Montage, Prasanna Vithanage spells out his life and times in cinema.

A: Being an only child in my family, my parents left me with a lot of books at an early age because they found it difficult to provide me with a playmate. I was an avid reader, and one day I declared to my mother I want to be a writerâ.

A: My father took me to watch every new release of Sinhala films on Saturdays. I saw lots of movies made by Lenin Moraes featuring Gamini and Malini and Vijaya and Malini. At the same time he took me to watch English language movies like Born Free and To Sir with Love with Sydney Poitier. I think that film where a black teacher trying to comply with unruly white students struck me because of its human sentiments. During this period my father supplied me with a lot of books from his office library and I remember well the impact Les Misarables by Victor Hugo and Black Tulip by Alexander Dumas had on me.

The film that changed the way I saw the world, was Dharmasena Pathiraja's Ahas Gawwa. A story about unemployed urban youth had a freshness that I had not experienced before. Then later at a Lester James Peries film festival I was able to see most of the films he directed. What attracted me to his films were the lyricism and the gentleness of the handling of the craft, where you felt he made the film with almost a velvet glove. Later I discovered Sathyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, Andre Vida and John Ford. I felt like Christopher Columbus, discovering new worlds!

Teenage years

Q: Did your teenage years of life or school support you in your interests in play writing and acting?

A: First I studied at St. John's girls' school and I used to sing Sinhala songs from the commercial films in drama society meetings. Then I was transferred to Cyril Janz College where I directed plays while acting in them to raise funds for the school development projects. I did the same when I was studying at D.S. Senanayake College later. When I was in school I went for an audition for Titus Totawatte's famous film Handaya. When he informed me that I have not been chosen for a role, my acting career came to an end. But he offered me a position as a production assistant, and that is when I became more and more interested in the making of films.

Q: As a person who started his professional artistic career as a stage director, can you tell us what made you to go into the world of films ?

A: Though I was involved in theatre before I directed my first film, I had already decided to become a filmmaker early on. In my school days I was an avid theater goer, and because of a book sent to me by a friend living in the United Kingdom, it made me want to further study stage acting and directing. The book was Legacy, by the great Russian actor and theoretician Stanislavsky. I think my maiden play Avie, a translation of Bernard Shawas Arms and the Man became more of a kinetic expression because I was thinking more like a filmmaker.

Q: Were you ever inspired by the films of Lester James Peries, Satyajit Ray or Kurosawa?

A: Yes, of course very much. I think what inspired me the most was the humanity which they expressed while giving each character a deserving dignity. And their movies continue to inspire me even to this day.

Stylistic elements

Q: Critics have mentioned that your cinematic codes and language have stylistic elements of masters of the European film schools such as Krzysztof Kie lowski, the Polish film director and Russian Andrei Tarkovsky, do you agree?

A: Kieslowski once said there are two kinds of filmmakers in this world. One kind cares about other human beings and sees their sufferings as his own and relates to it. The other kind sees the weaknesses of human beings and exploits them to gain popularity or financial success. I try my best to emulate the former. Tarkovsky was a true poet who was concerned about the value of human life and the meaning of existence. Both their films have made us examine ourselves in introspect. In the art of cinema they are immortals. And us mere mortals cannot even fathom to emulate them.

Q: What inspired you to make the multiple award winning film, Pura Handa Kaluwara (Death on a Full Moon Night)?

A: Things I saw when I went for location scouting in the North Central province made me change the script and to understand its people, their environment. It inspired me to look closer into the life of the people disengaging myself from the society I used to live in.

Q: Did the banning of the film by the then Government deter you from making films with controversial topics?

A: I have never made films exploiting so-called controversial topics. Others have made my films/stories controversial. When Purahanda was banned, I took it as a challenge and filed a fundamental rights violation case against the Film Corporation and the minister in charge of film industry. The incident did not deter me; in contrast, it gave me more strength to continue to follow my artistic instincts.

Q: Ira Mediyama (August Sun) was your second civil war film, in it you have highlighted the grave injustices perpetrated by the LTTE on the largely Muslim population in North. How much of an impact do you think your film had on raising awareness of those human rights issues?

Muslims

A: For the first time after seeing this movie, a lot of people living in the south became aware of the sufferings experienced by the Muslims, people who were chased away from their traditional homelands by the LTTE. I was pleased, because when I was making the film I promised the real refugees who acted as themselves, that I would make their voices heard.

Q: By directing Akasa Kusum, (Flowers of the Sky), your last feature film, have you completely moved away from your usual themes such as politics, civil war etc. and their impacts on society. What motivated you to make Akasa Kusum?

A: I don't think I completely moved away from the conflict between the characters and society or politics. Sandya Rani lost part of herself because of the pressures of the institutions larger than herself such as the film industry. When she gets a second chance in life she faces society or an industry more commercialised, where there is no concern for the value of the human being. It leads her to find herself.

Raising the value of human life in a society where actors or others have become commodities for me is in fact political.

New project

A: Yes. I am working on my first Tamil language film, and I am developing an epic period about the last days of the Kandyan kingdom, and also a film based on the events during the Second World War in Colombo.

Q: In your cinematic work, you have always worked with the cinematographer, M. D. Mahindapala? Why? What have you got to say about his contributions as a cinematographer?

A: I have worked on four films with Mahinda ( Purahanda, Anantha Rathriya, Ira Madiyama and Akasa Kusum) and look forward to work with him again. Apart from filmmaking the life of the human, our concerns are similar. He is able to bring out the characters inner feelings from the way he lights them up from outside. I consider him a true artistic partner, because when I make a film, I don't need to only talk to him about cinematography. He has been a part of my film process from the inception to the first print.

"We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image as opposed to a symbol is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it's a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it. "

- Andrei Tarkovsky

The present state of Sri Lankan cinema does not offer much hope. The industry is experiencing severe hardships, the social environment is hardly conducive to the growth of a wholesome cinema, and creativity is at a low ebb. Seen against this depressing background, Prasanna Vithanage can be described as the only new ray of hope.

Clearly, he is a gifted and innovative film director who is deeply dedicated to his chosen field. He has a fine visual imagination linked to a reflective mind. Reflectivity could be privileged as the ruling virtue of his work. For him, films are a way of thinking about society and how it works and does not work. Reflection and cultural specificity meet in his well-crafted images in complex and interesting ways.

Vithanage's movies are firmly tethered to the world we inhabit, and conform to its manifold dictates. However, the net outcome of his semioticised experiences is to provoke in us a deep disquiet about the world we move in and how we have chosen to invest it with meaning.

Suffering is crucial to the condition of his characters and indeed it is an inescapable fact of life. However, Prasanna Vithanage succeeds in transforming that suffering into a modality of clarifying moral ideals. This gives his characterization and dissection of the narrative discourses that find articulation in his films. His movies dramatise a dark world of space and mystery in which memory temporarily fades into the distance only to surface with added menacing power.

Source: Profiling Sri Lankan Cinema - Asian Film Centre

Authors: Wimal Dissanayeke and Ashley Ratnavibhushana

Politics, Art and moral obligation in the cinema of Prasanna Vithanage.

Philosophy of life through the lenses

Teenage years

Stylistic elements

Muslims

New project