For a man who has sought to redefine our film industry, Chandran Rutnam may well regard all he has done until now as “stepping stones to higher things”. After all, no other serious filmmaker here has tried so hard to connect Art and Commerce as he has. For such an enterprise a film education of a very high order is ...
“The Songs We Love” organised by the Senior Choir of Visakha Vidyalaya was unveiled at the Jeremiah Dias Hall on Friday, June 2 at 07.30 pmI like to eavesdrop at concerts. I like to hear what people are saying to each other, how it reflects what they are attending, and how it reflects their milieu. It was a desultory Friday ...
When way back in 1963 the Ceylon Civil Service was abolished and replaced by the Ceylon (later Sri Lanka) Administrative Service, two things happened. Important things.The first, quite obviously, was a shift from the elitist, Anglophile mentality that the Civil Service (being a product of colonialism) had pandered to. The second was the emancipation of a horde of artistes who, ...
In Ananda Abeynayake’s Kande Gedara (scripted by Somaweera Senanayake) there is a servant to the two protagonists who is casually referred to as “Kalagune” (for what reason, we are never told). The protagonists, an ageing couple (the father, played by Rohana Baddage, is placid and friendly, tolerant of everyone, including his wife, played by Ramya Wanigasekara, who’s more hostile and ...
What comes to mind when you think of Hikkaduwa? The sand and the beaches, obviously. You think of the waves lapping on the shore, the people adorning the coastline, and the sense of being a Sri Lankan – even when you hail from outside.There’s a charm to the South that virtually no other part of this country can hope to ...
I’d like to get back to Tuesday’s article, and to what that former Warden of S. Thomas’ College, at an official function, said: that the death of the Sinhala language can be traced to the difference in quality between the television serials our children watched and what they watch today. He was thinking of foreign dubbed series, since he referred ...
Theatre and cinema are clean different. Nuance and subtlety are to be met with in both, but it is true that it's more evident in the latter. Actors reflect this, logically enough. Whether they're exploring the human condition or a specific political issue in a work of art, the rift between overacting and underplaying tends to determine how dignified or ...
The best way to sum up Fadil Iqbal would be to describe him as a go-getter. That’s simplistic, even naive, but for the time being (I hope) it’ll do. The point about him is that he’s travelled, or rather cycled, through Sri Lanka. In nine days. No mean feat, obviously, which is why I am as interested in that journey ...
“Politically futile, socially false, intellectually worthless, aesthetically valueless, and industrially paralytic.” If all these words seem like contrived synonyms to you, then merely convey the intensity of the man speaking them. Juan Bardem is considered one of Spain’s most revered filmmakers: he was uncle to Javier Bardem, the half-crazed murderer who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for No Country ...
Concerts are the rage these days. So are reality shows. I am not a regular concertgoer, so I wouldn’t really know the kind of dedication that goes into them. I do know, however, that those who organise ensure that the event as such not only unveils well, but also reflects their efforts. This is particularly so if the organisers happen ...
Review of "The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story" by Hyeonseo Lee, with David John. Published by William Collins.Hyeonseo Lee is a defector. She's from North Korea. She returned to rescue her family 12 years after she left. The Girl with Seven Names recounts these two journeys, full of insights into a country that has been shunned ...
People are frail. They err. They repent. Err again. The world isn't composed of angels, after all. People are good in some ways and bad in others. There are dimensions of both. Once in a while, yes, you hear of people who do good all day and get nothing but rebuke from the rest. But that's rare.Not that it's unusual, ...
Photos by Sandra MackShe is known for her acting, particularly during a time when film as is known here and today was at its peak. She has her associations, her acquaintances, those she met and befriended on and off the set. To limit her to cinema however would be doing her an injustice, something she implies early on in the ...
Film stars have a habit of venturing into other, relatively uncharted terrains, especially if these provide them with opportunities to dabble in issues and campaigns that appeal to their conscience. Remuneration and publicity usually figure in less here, and for the most these stars graduate as social agitators, campaigners, and what-not eventually. We probably remember them less for that than ...
In Ran Diya Dahara Udayakantha Warnasuriya alludes to his advertising career: he gets a graphic designer to crop Geetha Kumarasinghe on a photo of Kamal Addaraarachchi and to make it appear as though the two of them were secretly married. Kamal, a crippled soldier, can’t talk, and in the first few sequences of these two together he is as confused ...
When I was in Grade Three we had to study a new subject. General Knowledge. We had to learn what the biggest mountains, the longest rivers, the smallest animals and birds, and countless other things were. We had to commit them to memory and we had to know the answer whenever we were questioned. My class teacher, Mrs Manel de ...
My first real encounter with the cinema was through a VHS tape that was bought when I turned 16. I had heard and read of T. E. Lawrence, I knew what he had done, and I was entranced by his exploits, but I hadn’t seen David Lean’s film. Lawrence of Arabia, then, was the first film I watched with any ...
From 1969, which saw Sugathapala Senarath Yapa’s Hanthane Kathawa, to 1989, which saw Vasantha Obeyesekere’s Kadapathaka Chaya, Vijaya Kumaratunga, the greatest matinee idol to ever grace the screen in this country, averaged about five movies a year. In both these films, undervalued for their time, reassessed more favourably today, he was cast opposite that other great actor, Swarna Mallawarachchi, and ...
S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike was a political doer. For the most. He knew words and knew how to colour on-the-moment rhetoric. He knew how to bend movement into mass action and how to stunt existing political structures. That is why he could turn 1947 into 1956, why what he left behind survived death (for better or worse), and more ...
In an article published in The Nation last Saturday (May 2), Gunadasa Amarasekara comments on and questions the state of reconciliation today. He accuses President Maithripala Sirisena of violating the Constitution by allowing the national anthem to be sung in Tamil. He then accuses the Opposition and even the general citizenry of pleading ignorance with this.He also extrapolates and charts ...
