My lunches with Sumitra-BY UDITHA DEVAPRIYA Source:Sundayobserver It was in 2013 that I paid my first visit to No. 24, Lester James Peries Mawatha. I was a law student at the time, but was freelancing on the arts to a newspaper. I have the vaguest recollection of that first visit, but I do remember that it lasted barely 15 minutes. The Perieses were expecting a visit from some relatives abroad: I would have to come another day. The second visit transpired around two weeks later. I have the vaguest recollection of that too, but I do remember conversing with Lester for three hours. Or was it four? In any case, “Mrs Per ies” chipped in only halfway through. ...
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Sumithra peries looking back in nostalgia-By Uditha Devapriya Source:Island Sri Lanka’s oldest living filmmaker, Sumitra Peries, stands shoulder to shoulder with South Asia’s pioneering woman artist-intellectuals, including her childhood heroine, Minnette de Silva. Yet, barring a comprehensive biography by Vilasnee Tampoe-Hautin, no writer has attempted to locate her life and work in the pantheon of South Asian cinema. A version of this article appeared in Himal Mag Southasia late last month. The cinema of South Asia blows up in a riot of colour and spectacle, offering a melange of romance, action, and history. Despite its modest scale, this is one of the biggest film industries in the world, worth around 180 billion rupees (roughly 2.4 billion dollars) in India alone. Today, it has transformed into a category of its own, mixing different genres and, at least in India, earning the apt moniker “masala cinema.” However, while many scholars have written ...
Looking back: Sagara Jalaya-By Uditha Devapriya Source:Island The first Sinhala film I saw was Chandi Shyama. It did not, I confess, leave much of a good impression on me. The second, Madol Doowa, caught my fancies. The third did not catch my fancies, but it left a better impression. This was Sagara Jalaya. Sumitra Peries’s fifth film, Sagara Jalaya is considered among her best work today. Yet, in another sense, it is hardly considered at all. While critics and writers are willing to ascribe to it the high place it occupies today, they do not pay to it the kind of attention they readily give to Sumitra’s other films, most prominently Gehenu Lamayi and Ganga Addara. That is hardly a fate suffered by Sagara Jalaya only, of course: critics also ignore her later work, in particular Sakman Maluwa, which to me shows Sumitra at her most mature. But in the case of Sagara Jalaya, a more difficult film, the omission seems more ...
Sep 5, 2021
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Tagged Gehenu Lamayi, Sagara Jalaya, Simon Nawagattegama
