While many a disheartening and discouraging incidents occurs forecasting a bleak future for Sri Lankan cinema, a generation of young filmmakers have braved themselves to face all odds and maintain the Sri Lankan identity in the international film arena.
Sanajaya Naullage whose maiden film, a project done for his film diploma conducted by the National Film Corporation has been selected for the Cinemadamare Film Festival in Italy.
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| Director Sanajaya Naullage |
Sanajaya’s short film ‘Butterflies’ depicting a child lost and troubled by the adult world was based on true incidents. The film examined the anxiety faced by a child between her mother and father in a broken family.
In addition to the competition, during the one month long festival from July 16 to August 16 festival till August in Southern Italy, the participant young film artistes from all the world over get opportunities to study cinema and other film related activities and make films. Together they shoot movies and they study cinema and they also have the chance to meet great names of international cinema, sharing their ideas and projects.
Sanajaya, a product of famous OCIC film course conducted by veteran filmmaker and award winning cinematographer Andrew Jayamanna, has also studied video technology at the National Youth Centre and done a diploma in film directing at the National Film Corporation under Tudor Weerasinghe and filmmaker Prasanna Vithanage.
Having worked at the Media Unit of the Health Ministry and as a television editor at a leading media institution, Sanjaya has to sacrifice his livings in order to fully dedicate himself to cinema.
“Cinema is a language that requires a great deal of study. Just like any other language you must know the letters, grammar, correct usage and combination of all other arts,” says Sanjaya speaking to the TV Times.
‘To study cinema every filmmaker has to study many other arts like literature, poetry, painting, theatre, music and many more’ says Sanajaya.
Having studied the editing and cinema technology, Sanjaya joined theatre and worked for the stage. As an actor he played in the Sinhala versions of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ directed by Jerome de Silva and ‘Merchant of Venice’ produced by Bandula Vithanage and Dharmasiri Bandaranayaka’s ‘Dhawala Beeshana’.
However like any other filmmaker who intends to work on serious cinema, financial constraints too became an obstacle to Sanjaya. Even to participate at this festival Sanjaya had to search for sponsors and he was thankful to Rev. Fr. Ernest Poruthota, Vasudeva Nanayakkara and Leon Joseph for supporting him.
Speaking on the future Sanjaya said that he was working on a feature film and has been writing the script. |
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