In Search of Nihal Fernando, a touching visual offering
Dr. Martin Pieris’s new film dips into the life and legacy of Nihal Fernando of Studio Times fame, after his two earlier films on Julia Margaret Cameron and Laki Senanayake.
Dr. Pieris, an old boy of St. Peter’s Bambalapitiya (like Nihal), but residing today in Australia, has with the visual acumen of a seasoned photographer put together a song of a film that weaves together Nihal’s innate sensitivity (he felt at odds at school and loved escaping to the wilds), his ethos as a photographer, and later those cherished sojourns with acolytes to the backwoods where hours were studiedly spent waiting for the right light to magically materialise, and of course his environmental activism…
Aptly titled In Search of Nihal Fernando, it is a 40-minute sojourn to the childhood house by the sea in Marawila then soaring up to Horton Plains and also Wilpattu with its waterholes frequented by bear and leopard- ‘the wild, the free and the beautiful’ of a land whose beauty he wanted fellow countrymen to appreciate…
Sunela Jayewardene evokes one of her “first Uncle Nihal’s”- which was a photo of a swami on a rock in faraway Okanda, while Nihal’s daughter Anu Weerasuriya recounts how her father was “driven by the sun”- this soft-spoken “Encyclopedia of Sri Lanka” as another contributor Sarinda Unamboowe calls him.
Old Times of Ceylon pal Irangani Serasinghe (Meedeniya as she then was) reminisces while Ashley de Vos puts Nihal against the historical perspective on the mantelpiece with Lionel Wendt. His campaign against the Eppawala mining is explored and also how Studio Times was “an ecosystem of knowledge and experiences and stories”…
With images from Nihal’s enduring odyssey, against lyrical lines from D. H. Lawrence to J. Vijayatunga (author of Grass for My Feet) the film is a touching visual offering.
Dr. Pieris wishes to thank Anu Weerasuriya, Chris Silva, Rohan Wijesinha, Sue Scott and Ismeth Raheem for their help.
In Search of Nihal Fernando will be screened at the auditorium of the Lionel Wendt on February 24 from 6.30 p.m. Admission is free.
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