Film importer, exhibitor, Scope cinema Pvt. Limited Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Skyline entertainment and consultancy Pvt. Limited CEO, Thushan Meemanage says that cinema industry will recover from the Covid-19 pandemic faster than any other industry. Citing the example of last year closure of cinemas in the aftermath of the attacks on Easter Sunday, Mr. Meemanage says just as the industry recovered one month after the attacks, this time too it would happen.“I am very optimistic because, Covid is a pandemic and the entire world is going through an economic recession. But if we look at Sri Lanka, because of the government’s initiatives people are getting back to their normal lifestyles. Most of the people have even forgotten that we are undergoing a COVID 19 crisis,” he said adding that it is the ideal time to bring people back to cinemas.

Introducing the practice of early screening of films with the participation of the artistes, Mr. Meemanage says that Sri Lankan cinema does not have the culture and tradition of waiting for a movie while both in English and Indian film industry it is there. “When it comes to English movies or even Tamil movies the people even in our country they know this movie is coming on a particular day. But when it comes to the local movies people will get to know only about one or two weeks after releasing the movie,”.

“We need to do something different. That is why we thought of taking this initiative and also in the future we are going to do it as an annual event,”.

In another important move to promote future filmmakers, Mr. Meemanage is planning to create a platform for young filmmakers. “Right now there is no platform for the young filmmakers to exhibit their products. There is no way to encourage them to produce new movies. So we are also going to have a similar kind of event for these young filmmakers also. Then they will also understand the customer feedback. They will also be able to share their views with the normal customers. So we just want to encourage them because Sri Lanka has some talented people and we need to give them an opportunity to perform,” he said.

Asked whether he believes that cinema could be revive by screening Sinhala films, Mr. Meemanage said that island wide highest collection for Chandran Rutnum’s ‘According to Mathew’  was made by  the Colombo City Centre. “So it is like this if there is a good movies people come and watch them”.

“The whole point of this festival is to promote local film industry. This should have been done by other parties but since no one taking the initiative, we have done it in order to improve and to revamp the local film industry,”.

He thanked the National Film Corporation chairman who gave the approval to the project as soon as it was requested, and filmmakers, Jayantha Chandrasiri, Udayakantha Warnasuriya, Susiran de Silva and Channa Perera who were bold enough to share their films and the support the project. ‘They were like backbone of this event. There were so many constraints that we had to face. So these people were behind us for the betterment of the industry.”.