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Kala Korner - by Dee Cee

'Too remarkable, too beautiful and too pure'
"Today Lester James Peries is making his comeback to Cannes - nearly 50 years after 'Rekawa'. His film 'Mansion by the Lake' (Wekande Walauwa) was inexplicably presented out of competition within the framework of the official selection.

We like to think that the Cannes selectors thus implied that the film could not be categorised, that it was too remarkable, too beautiful, too pure, too luminous for it to be subjected to a jury'.

This is what the influential French newspaper `La Monde' had to say about Lester's latest creative effort which was among six invited films at the recently concluded prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Rave reviews appeared when the film was screened and the distributors of the film were very happy.

The film is to be released in Paris in November. (When we would be able to see it in Sri Lanka is still a big question). The 18th full length feature film done by Lester, 'Wekande Walauwa' , according to him, "is, in a curious way, a summation of the themes which inspired me to film Martin Wickramasingha's celebrated masterpiece' Gamperaliya' in 1965.

Throughout my fifty years in the business of filmmaking my major preoccupation has been the Sri Lankan family in the process of dissolution. For me the family has been the microcosm of the social, political and economic changes in the world outside.

“Family relationships which in Sri Lanka are under the stress of an ever changing environment, are the themes which have been closest to my heart, to the way I feel ,to my attitude towards my people whom I try to understand with love and compassion," he writes in an introductory note about the film.

The acting led by Malini Fonseka, widow and owner of the mansion who returns from London after many years to see the splendour of a bygone era disappearing, Vasanthi Chaturani, her sister who sacrificed her life to look after the walauwe, Sanath Gunatlleka, her brother, Paboda Sandeepani, her teenage daughter, and Ravindra Randeniya, son of a tenant farmer now a successful businessman had won much praise at Cannes.

Yet another honour
Dr. Lester James Peries reached another milestone in his career when he was awarded the prestigious UNESCO Fellini Gold Medal at the Cannes Festival this year "as a tribute to his film career, which has inspired a whole generation of Sri Lankan filmmakers and in recognition of his exceptional contribution to Sri Lankan cinema and for laying the foundation for an authentic national film culture".

He received the award from UNESCO's Director-General Koichiro Matsuura at a special ceremony at the Hotel of Cap-Eden Rock, along with Clint Eastwood in recognition of his exceptional career in cinema.

The screening of a 55 minute documentary on Lester by a 22 -year- old film French director, Julien Plantereux as an official selection in the Special section of the Cannes Festival, (there are six sections in all) was an unexpected happening.

The young man had been in Sri Lanka a few months back collecting material for the film but for it to have got selected for screening at the Festival was a bonus.

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