Legendary director who did not own a home of his own dies at 99
By Somasiri Munasinghe
Internationally-acclaimed filmmaker Dr. Lester James Peries, known as the Father of Sri Lankan Cinema, who passed away at the of 99 on April 29 was a man who relinquished a life of luxury in England, opting to come back and change the landscape of native cinema almost single-handedly.
Late Tissa Abeyesekera described him as ‘the father of every film made in Sri Lanka’, earning his niche in the history for his legendary contribution to take Sinhala cinema to the attention of the world, freeing it from the clutches of South Indian masala films.
Toronto-based actor Ajith Jinadasa who knew the director since 1967, from the time he was cast as the child lead of Lester’s Madol Doowa as Upali Giniwelle, sums up his feelings about Lester’s demise in a few words: “Life seems to have stopped.” Ajith visited the filmmaker when he was vacationing in the island last year at Lester’s rented house on the leafy lane named after him – sadly that seems to be the only recognition to come from the government to honour the filmmaker’s phenomenal services to the nation!
Ajith remembers how Lester focussed his piercing eyes on him for the first time, when he was with 5000 other junior school boys selected for Madol Doowa auditioning. “All we had to do was read some paragraphs from the novel while he was watching us, smoking a cigar from a distant. During the filming he never told me how to act.” About three weeks into shooting Lester went for a short walk with him ‘and all what he told me was Upali Giniwelle is a happy, playful child’.
“I knew that something was amiss with what I was doing. I took his cue and tried to be natural as much as possible,” says Ajith. The film remains the most popular children’s movie ever made in Sri Lanka.
When Ajith was acting in Gehunu Lamai, made by Lester’s wife Sumithra, the fillmaker told him that he would never be able to surpass the skills he showed in Madol Doowa. He had said: “Ajith, when you acted in my film you never knew about acting, but the difference now is you think you are an actor.”
Ajith related this incident to show how Lester’s films became landmarks in the native cinema. “He always cast new or relatively unknown actors in his films. Take for example the characters of Piyal and Kaisaruwaththe Muhandiram in Gam Peraliya. Henry Jayasena was a relatively unknown stage actor at that time and David Dharmekeerthi did not have more than a couple of roles in commercial pot boilers to his credit. Lester Sir knew how to get the best out his cast.”
Toronto-based Siva Sivanandan, filmmaker and former assistant general manager of the State Film Corporation, who also worked with K. Gunaratnam of Cinemas Limited, knew Lester for more than 50 years.
“He is one of the most honest and simple persons I have ever met in Sri Lanka,” says Sivanandan who directed Oba Dutuda which won the Sarasaviya’s best supporting actress award for Iranganie Serasinghe. “He was quiet, honest and never talked ill of anybody and I am sure that it was the secret for longevity in his life,” says Sivanandan, adding that the veteran filmmaker advised on many issues when he was directing his debut which was lost to fire during the Colombo ethnic troubles in 1980s.
He described the collaboration between Lester and Anton Wickremesinghe as one of the most prolific associations that enriched the native film industry. “Anton was a connoisseur of arts with the money, and Lester had the talent. Gam Peraliya, the most critically-successful film in Sinhala cinema, was financed by Wickremesinghe.
Sivanandan says he used to meet the maestro whenever he had the time to discuss about films, both local and international, and was amazed by Lester’s wide knowledge of the medium. The last time he saw Lester was about three years ago when he was on vacation in Sri Lanka, and treasures a book about the filmmaker, autographed by him.
Toronto-based award-winning Sri Lankan film maker Priyankara Vittanachchi confesses that he was inspired to study films and be a director after seeing Lester’s Ashasin Polowata (From Skies to Earth), a film he describes as ‘hypnotic’. “In fact I met him after I made Samige Kathawa which won the best actor’s award at New York City Film Festival and told his film Ahasin Polawata made me a filmmaker he laughed and said ‘Time has come for me to come down from the skies to earth’, smilingly. Sarasaviya film weekly editor Aruna Gunarathne mentions this incident in Lester’s biography titled Avarjana (Reflections) written by him. When Priyankara heard about the legendary film maker’s death on Sunday the almost cryptic prediction had come to his mind.
Chandrarathne Bandara, journalist, writer poet and editor of Sinhala monthly Yathra, described Lester’s demise as the greatest loss to Sinhala cinema. Though he had not met the director personality he had been a great admirer of Lester’s films.
He says Lester’s massive success was partly due to good scripts. “Gam Peraliya script was written by veteran Reggie Siriwardhane and Ahasin Polawata and Nidhanaya by Tissa Abeyesekera. In Rekawa there is no mention of a script writer but according to the credits the dialogues had been written by KAW Perera,” he says mentioning that the lack of mass appeal for his later films may be due to bad scripts.
Lester was a continuous source of inspiration to many of his younger colleagues and backed them in many controversies. “He was in his eighties when he joined the younger generation of film makers to oppose the ban of Asoka Handagama’s controversial film Aksharaya”.
Lester was not overtly political in his career but late Dharmasena Pathiraj, a second generation film maker who took over the responsibility of continuing what Lester pioneered, had said ‘Lester is a filmmaker who should be carried forward by hiding him in the wings of the revolution’, according Bandara.
Lester’s debut Rekhava won the highest international honours for the country’s cinema by being included in the main competition at Cannes Film Festival in 1957. That record was not broken till Vimukthi Jayasundera earned the Caméra d’Or in 2005 for his magnificent debut Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land). Lester was one of the few people who went to Katunayake airport to welcome Jayasundera when he retuned to the island with the award.
I have met Lester on two occasions. I saw him for first time in my life at the screening of Jean-Gabriel Albicocco French classic Le Petit Matin at the Colombo Empire in the 70s at a foreign film festival and met him personally to interview about his debut TV serial Selalihini Gammanaya for the Sunday Observer. I am yet to see a Sinhala tele serial of the same calibre. It featured leading Sinhala film stars like Gamini Fonseka, Geetha Kumarasinghe, Sriyani Amarasena and Denawaka Hamine. The serial also had tongue in cheek humour, even looking into the personal lives of the stars. In one episode I remember Gamini speaking about the cost of hair transplanting for Geetha’s Swiss husband!
I met Lester for the second time in the company of my university French lecturer Jean-Pierre Hautin who played a leading role in his film Puran Appu. Lester and his wife Sumithra spoke fluent French and she later served as Sri Lanka’s ambassador to France.
Lester was the last of the great world directors like Satyajit Ray, John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Orson Welles and John Huston who shaped the international cinema from days of Citizen Kane. In an interview with Uditha Devapriya, the Sri Lankan cineaste had said he was inspired by Italian neo-realism and was ‘overwhelmed by directors like Vittorio de Sica and Luchino Visconti’s fidelity to realism’.
Dr. Ediriweera Sarathchandra described Lester’s masterpiece Gam Peraliya as Opa-Pathika, a birth without the union of a mother and a father, something like Immaculate Conception described in Christianity, for its total break from the existing film norms and traditions.
Late Tissa Abeyesekera compared Lester’s decision to leave English shores and come to his native country to enrich local cinema to one of his kinsman whose birth name was Charles Jacob Peries. He came back to Sri Lanka leaving his flourishing legal career in England, famously changing his name to Devar Surya Sena and revolutionized the traditions of native music.
Brian Baxter who knew Lester closely, writing an obituary in The Independent, says Lester James Peries, like his Indian contemporary Satyajit Ray, was more highly regarded abroad than in his native country. His career was dominated by a constant struggle to obtain finance and, during 50 years directing features, he completed only 18 films, he adds.
Same thing can be said about Kerala filmmaker Adoor Gopalaskrishnan, one of Lester’s favourite directors. Adoor too is better known outside than in India and I think he could have easily won an illusive Oscar for his native country if any of his films were represented India at the Academy awards. Lester, on the other hand, had his film Wekanda Walwwa representing Sri Lanka at the 2002 awards.
Lester’s films had been described by his close friend and British film maker Lindsay Anderson, the director of If…which won the the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival, as “works of Chekhovian grace”.
Lamenting the poor response to Lester’s Gam Peraliya among the country’s intelligentsia, Tissa Abeyesekera said, “Gamperaliya was a miracle, in the sense that nothing in the relatively short history of Sinhala film – eighteen years up to that time – pre-shadowed its arrival, is to confirm the refusal of the Sri Lankan cultural establishment to accept Lester’s first two films, Rekawa and Sandeshaya, as being worthy of serious critical assessment”.
Lester’s foot prints paving the way for a truly national cinema may be under threat with the emergence of new technology that calls for totally new art forms, but the best judge of his epic role in Sinhala cinema will be the history.
