Film maker Priyankara Vittanachchi delivering his lecture
Delivering the inaugural lecture of a film workshop, Toronto-based film maker Priyankara Vittanachchi drew the attention of the participants to the world’s most effective art form.
The series of workshops dwelling into all the aspect of film-making has been arranged by Ruk Sevana Cultural Association affliliated to Toronto Maha Vihara.
“It is hard to find a human being who doesn’t like films,” said the director of Sam’s Story which won the best actor’s award at the New York City Film Festival. “Communist leader Lenin’s comment that the cinema is the most effective among all the arts forms is proof of how the powerful media can change people’s minds. He is the most qualified leader to say so.”
The lecture highlighting the aspects of script-writing as the most important aspect of film-making drew examples from masters of the world cinema. “Orson Welles who made the classic Citizen Kane which a must-see for every serious film fan, summed up the power of films by saying cinema has no boundary. It is a ribbon of dreams,” said Vittanachchi who attended the 50thanniversary of Citizen Kane while studying films at the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).
“For me, cinema is a dream. Sometimes we remember dreams and sometimes we don’t. We get scared, become sad and angry in dreams. Watching a film in a dark theatre with absolutely no distractions produce the same effect in us,” he added.
To prove his point he showed an aesthetically-attractive song sequence from the Bollywood hit Kuch Kuch Hota Hai featuring heartthrob Shah Rukh Khan with three Mumbai heroines with angelic charm. “I enjoyed this film thoroughly in the theatre though I knew that the theme offered me no intellectual satisfaction and it had many embarrassing bloopers but the director had exploited his tactful knowledge of the visual medium to entertainment his audience. This is how the Bollywood film industry manufactures celluloid dreams as means of escapism. In such films we tend to ignore the logical side and take refuge in the movie’s soporific effect briefly. Once out of the theatres we totally forget them, sometimes blaming ourselves for wasting our valuable time. A good film produces the exact opposite effect.”
Stressing on the most important aspect of script-writing for making a successful film, Vittanachchi quoted from the late Hollywood legend Alfred Hitchcock. The film maker had said that when the script is done ninety per cent of the film is over, emphasizing the crucial role played by the script in a film. Shooting of the film is the most boring part, the legendary director of Psycho had said.
Tallking about the Sinhala film industry, Vittanachchi said Lester James Peiris’ film Golu Hadawatha, Nidanaya and Ahasin Polawata, and Gamini Fonseka-directed Parasathu Mal had the best scripts in the local cinema.
“In Golu Hadawatha Lester creates a drama emanating from the protagonist Sugath’s unexpressed love for Dammi. Some people said that Dharmasiri Bandaranayke would have played the character of Sugath better. But my belief is that no actor in Vikrama Bogoda’s generation could have handled that sensitive portrayal better than himself,” Vittanachchi said.
Madol Doowa actor Ajith Jinadasa who was present at the lecture mentioned two interesting observations that Lester had made.
“Golu Hadawatha came under heavy criticism from the film fans for the total laid back qualities of Sugath. The only expression of love he dared to display is touching Dammi’s hand while walking through a rubber estate. Lester told me, that particular scene drew heavy applause at a festival for expressing love even in such a distant manner. In a different occasion, film critics had criticized author Karunasena Jayalath who wrote the novel for making his protagonist unusually laidback, not willing to express his love. The writer had shot back saying ‘Please remember that if he did so the title Golu Hadawatha (Silent Heart) won’t be an apt title for the book or the movie!”
Vittanachchi said the script of Parasathu Mal is as powerful as Citizen Kane. “We love Orson Welle’s hero from the beginning but in case of Bonnie Mahaththaya, the main character of Parasathu Mal, is a womanizer exploiting young innocent village women. But at the end of the film we begin to love him and ready to shed a tear for him. That’s the power of the script.”
The first film made in the world, a 49-second documentary by Lumiére Brothers made in 1895 showing a train arriving at a station was shown at the lecture.
“Another film made by Lumiére Brothers was a short documentary showing the workers leaving a factory after work. Seven or eight years later a French magician called Georges Mélies took a step forward by producing what could be described as the first science fiction film, tilted A Trip to the Moon,” he said.
Films need not try to give messages. When directors try to do that, they tend to demean the intelligence of the audience. Remembering an incident while he was lecturing about script-writing at the Film Corporation in Colombo, Vittanachchi said late actor and script writer Tony Ranasinghe was trying to get the approval for one of his scripts without success. “We all know that the film corporation is run by people who don’t know anything about movie-making and when Tony met a higher up he was asked what message the film was carrying. Tony got up from his seat and while leaving had said ‘if I want to convey a message, I would have sent a telegram’” Vitanachchi said with a chuckle.
He described Sunil Ariyarathne’s Sarungale as a well-made film. The movie discussed the difficult subject of racial tensions between the Sinhalese and Tamil without trying be didactic. “The dangerous path the country was taking from the 70s were well presented by portraying certain incidents from the tragic life of protagonist Nadarajah, played to perfection by Gamini Fonseka, without conveying a message.”
Another element that a script must contain is believability. “A script cannot lie. When I was conducting a class of script-writing a girl wrote a brief script about a woman prisoner falling in love with a male jail guard. When she read it in the class, I thought it was very well written but another student who happened to be a former jail guard said that male guards never worked in the female section. Maximum care should be taken avoid to such ‘fatal errors’” the director said.
He discussed films by Satyajit Rai with special emphasis on Pachar Panchali and Robert de Nero and Meryl Streep-starrer Falling in Love and clips from Jurrasic Park to further show examples of different styles of film-making.
Denzil Abeyewardene who has made several Sinhala films in addition to working as a casting director for foreign productions in Sri Lanka was also present at the lecture.
The next lecture is scheduled to be held in three weeks, according to a source of the Ruk Sevana Cultural Association. (newstrails.com)
