Bookshelf
To appreciate a film better
Understanding the technical aspects in a film helps
the filmgoer to appreciate it better. Student of cinema Chandana Silva,
in a bid to help the filmgoer in guiding him to look for the finer points
in a film, has written an interesting book. He calls it ‘Cinema Viyarana
Vyavaharaya’ - the use of the grammar in cinema.
The book is an attempt to analyse the art of cinema and its visual beauty
from a technical point of view. The author points out that in making a
film, its creator makes use of the language of cinema in a manner that
he thinks is most suitable for his creation. These are being used as creative
instruments in the best possible way in order to create the desired impact.
Once the filmgoer understands these, it is possible for him or her to appreciate
the film better. It also helps to distinguish a good film from a bad one.
In order to make the reader understand the technical jargon better,
the author quotes examples from the better known films. He does not confine
such illustrations to the well known classics but makes use of our own
productions so that the reader feels more at home. For instance, he quotes
Basil Wright’s ‘Song of Ceylon’ as a good example of the correct
structure of images, mixing of images, movement and flow. He explains in
detail commonly heard terms like Fade out, Fade in, Dissolve, Wipe,
Long, Medium and Close ups.
He quotes ‘Nidhanaya’, which he describes as one of the finest
cinematic creations including photography, acting and other technical aspects,
to illustrate the role of the script writer in translating a story to a
series of images. Tissa Abeysekera turned a nine page short story into
a two-hour film. What type of details appear in the script? Take the scene
of Willie Abeynayake and Irene’s wedding night - scene number 20 in the
script.
“It’s late in the night and the lights are off in the room except for
a reading lamp which lights up a small area near the bed post. Irene stands
silhouetted against the frame of a long window which opens out onto the
balcony. She is dressed in a flowing white night dress. Propped up in bed
is Willie. The figure of Irene framed against the window is reminiscent
of the girl in Willie’s dream. She turns round and Willie closes his eyes
pretending to be fast asleep.
Irene moves slowly across the room and her interest is drawn towards
the portrait of Willie’s mother again. She walks up to it and begins staring
at the picture. The woman in the picture has half-smile frozen as if she
is holding a mischievous secret. We notice that Irene has tears in her
eyes. She wipes them.”
Scenes 21 to 24 are repeated in the book to give the reader a clear
understanding of how important it is to plan and describe the relevant
sequences in detail at the time the script is written. The way they are
presented will also help to highlight certain aspects and moods of the
characters.
The author has also attempted to build up a Sinhala vocabulary of terminology
used in cinema. And to make the reader understand these terms better, he
has given the English terms alongside the Sinhala ones.
Reading through the book many will recall the better films that have
been screened over the years. Others will want to see them and apply the
yardsticks Silva has mentioned.
What transparency!
A Government circular on tender procedure issued
in Sinhala insisted on the need to maintain paradrushyathawa. What
was being conveyed is the need to maintain transparency. The meaning of
the word, however, is totally the opposite - being opaque.The correct word
is Parandathawa.
Quoting this example among many others, Professor Tissa Kariyawasam,
Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sri Jayawardenapura University posed the question:
“Is anyone bothered today on how we write Sinhala?”
In a hard-hitting speech on how there is absolute chaos in the way Sinhala
is being used, he picked up dozens of examples with glaring mistakes in
grammar. “The worst culprits are the media,” he said. He picked out the
private channels in the electronic media as the worst offenders.
In what he termed ‘Dedunu (rainbow) Sinhala’ he read out
a citation on a souvenir given to a speaker after his presentation at a
leading Colombo girls’ school. “It was a mere collection of sweet sounding
words with absolutely no meaning. They had even used words from Kavsilumina,
the Sinhala classic. “Whoever taught them Sinhala obviously did not know
to teach”, he stressed. He quoted instances where National Education Institute
publications (meant as guidelines to teachers) had erred.
“We seem to be improving in the use of English as well,” he commented.
He quoted an example: An advertisement announcing the sponsorship of a
show started as ‘S... D and S... de A presents Dallas Connection’.
He wondered whether someone was trying to teach a little bit of grammar
to the heir to the British throne who happened to be in Sri Lanka at the
time. This was also a clear case of someone blindly translating from the
Sinhala which also had the same grammatical mistake.
Prof. Kariyawasam, who was addressing the gathering at the launch of
Dr. J. B. Disanayaka’s latest publication, paid him a tribute for the great
effort he is making on the correct use of the language. “Let us resolve
that we should try and avoid learning Sinhala through English in the New
Millennium,” he appealed.
Use of the Sinhala idiom
Professor J. B. Disanayaka has spent many years
studying the use of the Sinhala language by different types of people in
different parts of the country. The fourth in a series on Folk Idiom
is just out as a Godage publication.
Titled ‘Siyalanga Ru Soba’, the book deals with Sinhala idiomatic
usage relating to the body. It is a collection of articles (50 in all)
which appeared as a weekly feature in Meevitha, the magazine section
issued with the Sunday Divaina. Titled ‘Mehema Basak’, the series
was highly appreciated, which as the author himself acknowledges had the
best response for any series he has written.
He explains the popularity of the series: “I wrote on what the average
Sinhala person does every day. About the language they use. Possibly they
found it close to their hearts. The articles were also a mirror of our
society. I tried to capture the spirit of the fast dying cultural traits
of our society.”
Recognition
Personalities who have made a significant contribution
in numerous spheres during the past fifty years since Sri Lanka gained
independence, gained recognition during the past few months. There was
yet another ceremony recently to felicitate leading artistes to mark the
Golden Jubilee of Independence.
These well known personalities received the Bunka (Culture) Awards from
the Japan Sri Lanka Friendship Fund. The recipients had contributed immensely
towards the development of the arts. They were Dr. Chitrasena and Dr. Panibharata
(dance), Pandit Amaradeva and Premasiri Khemadasa (music), Dr. Lester James
Peries and Titus Totawatta (cinema), Dr. Siri Gunasinghe, Dr. Gunadasa
Amarasekera and Prof. K. Sivathamby (literature), Sugathapala de Silva
and Henry Jayasena (drama), H. A. Karunaratne (painting) and Tissa Ranasinghe
(sculpture).
Up and about
It is indeed consoling to see veteran dramatist
Sugathapala de Silva now sufficiently recovered to be present at events
where his services to Sinhala theatre are acknowledged.
When the National Youth Services Council recently recognised his role
over the years in the promotion of drama among the youth, he was there
to receive an award. He also turned up at the Trans Asia Hotel to receive
the Bunka Award.
Festival time
It’s festival time again. The second round of this
year’s Sinhala Drama Festival is now on at the John de Silva Memorial Theatre.
Sixteen were selected out of 51 dramas staged for the first time during
1997. A feature of this year’s festival is the emergence of a number of
newcomers.
The second round ends on May 31.
Drama review
There was dizzy brilliance
By Sumali Pandithaweera
The other day at the Lionel Wendt theatre audiences
were treated to as rare an experience as one could get on the English stage-or
any stage here for that matter, when Gamini Haththotuwegama - University
lecturer in English and Western drama, pioneer of the famed “Wayside Theatre”
- took a day off to give a classic exhibition of creative art of the “purest
ray serene”. I refer to his production of “A Plague of Rats” on
the fabled Hamelin menace with a cast of Museaus College girls on May 8
which was a highly rewarding evening for lovers and students of theatre.
It started with Iranganie C. Perera’s version of the well-known Gogolian
comedy “The Government Inspector”, which put the audience in as
ebulliently receptive mood as possible for the fabulous display of stagecraft
that was to follow.
A word or two about the first play done with a cast of senior girls
at Museaus. Gogol’s work has seen several versions on and off stage including
the delightful Danny Kaye version on film. The Government Inspector
invites study in terms of a different form and style. It’s a play set for
the “picture frame,” coming off well in a conventional mount, - which it
did that day. Cutting off all fancy stuff the director unpretentiously
aimed at a good, sound and sensitive production and achieved it I must
say effortlessly, helped by good, intelligent acting all round, neat, carefully
designed decor and period costuming.
It took only some few minutes to break the comic ice. This was as fine
and fruitful a handling of tempo as you could get within the constraints
of a very straight “talking play”.
Some tributes to the leading performers: It was touch and go between
Lestakoff (Bimsara Premaratne) carrying off the romantic adventures so
well (oh how he went down on both knees to mother and daughter!) and the
Mayor pushing things along with his bustling style (Kushmandi Goonetillake).
Anna, the mother - (Anasuya Subasinghe) presumably fussed through to second
place here.
There was no let off by the supporting cast. It was a risky choice of
play - a work done repeatedly here with a 50-odd history of performance
in Sinhala and English. It could have devolved into a mere talkie-talkie
with pretty-pretty speechifying, which would have been the most narrow
kind of theatre anywhere. That it, luckily, did not speaks well for the
cast and for the hand that directed them. Its success augured well for
the follow-up play in this 2-part programme. We had an audience already
softened up and prepared. But who could have been prepared for the wonders
that did follow when “A Plague of Rats” stormed the boards?
Who would have expected with this “little chit of a story” to see such
an unleashing of creative energies and skills, such a heaping up of the
multiple resources of theatre as hardly before done? Mime and movement,
song and dance, narrative verse and cut-and-thrust dialogue, individual
cameos and group choreography - a richly gathered audio-visual spectacle
superbly scored and lit up, a “text” made to yield fertile illuminations
all the way, new daring interpretations ambiguously endowed, a drama moving
with inexorable rightness from outrageous comedy and satire, entrancing
festive spectacle, spectacular melodrama to gripping tragedy - a tale ultimately
brought “home” to a country and a people and a parentage who have lost
and keep on losing, their children.
Behind it all was a unique cohesion and collaging of different theatre
traditions. The play begins sensationally with a bunch of cooks singing
and dancing to an old ditty “There are rats, rats, as large as pussy cats”,
neatly adapted. Well, the cooks dance like the Kolam clowns and go to open
a cupboard - out of which jump a whole heap of eerie rats! Already Haththotuwegama
is lacing his sequences with intriguing ambiguity and irony. What is exciting
on top is the blend he’s achieving all the time: the blend of heterogeneous
effects, the blend of influences and inspirations. Look at the way the
three-girl Narrators (Niluka Wickremaratchchi / Nyomi Delwita/ Anupama
Dias Abeygunawardena) all deserving of the highest plaudits - who knit
the proceedings, sliding in and out of the action, so exquisite in their
utterance, look how they’d dip their exposition with an “aiyyo”. This was
accomplished at the end to - a fine frame indeed.
Throughout the collaging of effects is tactful, precise, economical
but cumulatively rich, a growing welter. The way the dramatist slips in
two lines - only two - from “Signore - Signore” as the threatened Mayor
paces about helplessly wracking his brains, was a lighting shocker. The
swift, precise placing was expert.
Always moving on different surfaces, planes and levels the drama leapt
and swung around with a dizzy brilliance. Rats, children, citizens - even
mayor and councillors - poured in and out from nowhere, from everywhere,
from every conceivable opening, from under the seats as it were from behind
the audience down the aisle. This was no new trick but its working was
so becoming.
In this transportation the music again underscores the effect swelling
the whole atmosphere (“The New World Symphony” by Dvorak I think) creating
a dream-like mystical effect. Appropriately, the children have their faces
uplifted, and their arms uplifted too, and this time with a marvellous
irony, they are all seen waving puppet rats gloved into their hands.
It was this attention to detail stupendously comprehensive, which lifted
the production all the way through. Rats and children move in a broad sweep
and flow, yet as they move the producer carves out brilliant individual
touches, little vignettes.
The individual key figures in the play were developed into round personae.
The Mayor (played by Sayami Namalwewa) was a rolling ton of fun, as round
as you could wish for, who could move, dance, shake, twist her body to
any shape and turn and modulate her voice, her face cunningly, disarmingly.
She was outrageously good, brilliant, versatile. Her overindulgence, her
visible “excesses” tied up with the fundamental social criticism - she
looked irresponsible to the core, a shirker pre-varicator par excellence.
So was the Piper’s role exploited and developed very imaginatively and
Upeka Kotalawela rose to the heights designed for her. This Piper carries
a bag full of tricks - mementos of dead creatures he had got rid of which
he’d pull out at strategic moments! He announces himself by dropping a
puppet rat on arrival and then on his departure he flings down a dead rat
ugh! and the menace is clear. He graduates into a hard harsh customer alright.
Even his speech is very tough, now, unyielding - the performer sees it
through excellently.
At first I thought a mature actress with a silky smooth voice was imperative
but Upeka seized the role firmly as she went along and came through triumphantly.
The production benefited by some superbly selected and executed music
ranging from contemporary pop, light classical to classical. Prajapa de
Silva used her best resources for the climax which proved very moving -
a great score!
The whole production depended on a stunning paradox: for here was adult
theatre at its mature best, subtly oh magnificently camouflaged as children’s
theatre par excellence... Congratulations to the whole cast with those
three lovely Narrators making first claim and the master’s hand all the
way.
Soon it’ll be ‘Fiddler on the Roof’
The stage play 'Fiddler on the Roof” adapted
from the book by Joseph Stein and based on Sholem Aleichem stories will
be presented by the Visakha Vidyalaya Old Girls’ Association at the Lionel
Wendt Theatre in Colombo on June 5, 6 and 7 at 7.00 p.m.
Indu Dharmasena will direct and produce the play. Music direction is
by Soundari David and choreography by Shohan Chandiram.
The cast of nearly 100 are students of Visakha Vidyalaya. The sale of
tickets has commenced.
|
