Arts
‘I want my films to have a life afterwards’
Rehan Mudannayake is telling us why he thinks his new short film, Elephant, is deserving of its tagline: ‘a harrowing drama based around a fictional upper class family in Sri Lanka’.
Get a camera and start making films: Rehan Mudannayake. Pic by Ali Niyaz
“It’s a very tragic, very serious story,” he says. I think he’s getting at the point that we all have regrets and personal grief-even the most privileged among us. As an afterthought he adds-“I need to start making some comedy!”
We’re at his family home in Colombo, of which Rehan occupies one corner. His room is as one would expect it to be-brilliantly organised chaos. Rehan, 25, is the son of Sri Lankan author Ashok Ferrey and he grew up in Colombo.
He’s well placed to talk about Colombo society-and moreover, “I’ve always been interested in making films about Colombo and its people,” he explains.
He received his first video camera aged nine and began making videos immediately. His first serious film was in boarding school at Worth Abbey Sussex, where he completed his secondary education after Elizabeth Moir School.
It was a film about a young man and suicide-“I think all young filmmakers start out with very intense and emotional cinema,” he says wryly.
Rehan studied film, musicology, literature and theatre at the University of Kent and the University of Amsterdam and says “university matures you and introduces you to like-minded people,” when asked if studying film has made an impact. “It also gives you a chance to fail in a bubble where it doesn’t matter so much.”
His favourite film when growing up was 2001: a Space Odyssey, but having recently watched it on the big screen he’s not so sure anymore.
This is something he warns us of when we settle down for a pre-preview preview of Elephant. The official preview is on Thursday (December 17) but Rehan is generously allowing us, alongside his protagonist Jehan Mendis and wife, to watch the 20 minute short earlier on his laptop. “Don’t tell me your comments until you’ve watched the film on the big screen,” he tells us.
Elephant is about a young man, Mahesh de Soysa, who travels to Galle to clean out his recently deceased Aunt Tilly’s house. He is grief stricken at the passing of his aunt, but his visit may shock him more.
The film stars Jehan Mendis as Mahesh, Kaushalya Fernando as Norma, Angela Seneviratne as Tilly and Ruvin de Silva as Indi.
“I was very lucky to have all these amazing actors on board with the film,” says Rehan. Vimukthi Jayasundara is Executive Producer.
Elephant was shot on a small budget in Colombo and Galle. Rehan has resigned himself to not making too much money in his pursuits as a film maker-he makes his bread and butter from commissioned work for corporates and organizations.
Picking short films as a medium right now has a lot to do with the lack of resources, he says. “I want to make a full length feature for sure.
We already have a script that’s work in progress about a group of friends who return to Colombo after university-it’s probably the wildest, funniest, craziest thing I’ve ever written.”
Rehan (fourth from left) with the cast at the official preview of the film
Rehan penned the script for Elephant alongside Ashok Ferrey and Sheela Lal. It’s based on an unpublished short story by Ferrey and Rehan believes that despite the backgrounds of its protagonists, anyone should be able to relate to this.
He thinks that this is his responsibility as a filmmaker, to straddle an undefined line between artistic integrity and appealing to wider audiences.
The intellectual snobbery of art isn’t something he holds too much with-“I want to make films that are also entertaining.
It’s great to make films that go to festivals and win awards but it’s also important to have films that have a life afterwards. I want my films to be watched 50 years from now.”
Advice for young filmmakers: “Get a camera, go out there and start making films. It might be terrible but then again we’re all terrible when we start out. You’ll eventually get better and style will eventually grow out of that.
Don’t worry too much about your work being derivative.”
Elephant previewed on December 17 at the Harold Pieris Gallery, Lionel Wendt and the screening was followed by a Q & A session.
It will screen again on January 17 at the Archive of Contemporary Art, Architecture and Design in Jaffna. You can find Rehan’s other work on his YouTube channel ‘Odyssey’.