'Bora Diya Pokuna' wins Best Film award at Honolulu International Film Festival

"Bora Diya Pokuna" (Scent of the Lotus Pond) Feature Film debut by Satyajit Maitipe was awarded the special prize to the Best Fiction Film at the recently concluded Honolulu International Film Festival, 2005 in Hawaii, United States of America.

For equality of opportunities, whichever the original format (film, analogical video, digital video, animation), the 22 movies at competition at the Honolulu International Festival were processed alike: using approved software by the Annual Program without Frontiers and lodged in auxiliary servers for digital screening.

The Jury of the Festival awarded the following Categories: screenplay, direction, actor and actress performances, art, photography, editing, and integral realization.

In addition to the Prizes by Category, the Jury grants the Special Prize to the Best Fiction Film and the Special Prize to the Best Documentary Film.

The Best performance, by an Actor was won by Malayalam actor Thampy Anthony in "Beyond the Soul", an America-Kerala co-production directed by Rajive Anchal. "Beyond the Soul" bagged all the top awards (Best film, Direction and Screenplay) at the 2003 New York Independent film festival.

The Best performance, by an Actress was won by Lilly Li in 'Sandstorm", A Canadian Film directed by Michael Mahonan. This film made in Chinese language is based on the suppression of the student uprising in China.

It has already won several major awards at Philadelphia, Houston Multicultural, and Moscow Law and Society Intentional Film Festivals.

"Bora Diya Pokuna" previsouly won the "Tiger Award's nomination" for the most promising new directors of - 2004 at the Rotterdam International film festival, in The Netherlands.

In 2004 the prestigious Smithsonian institute of USA selected Bora Diya Pokuna for their Discoveries - 2004 Programme as one of the 06 most exciting, entertaining and original films from Asia.

Jay Weisberg of The Variety described Bora Diya Pokuna as a film with "Surprisingly explicit content and complex protagonists".

"Bora Diya Pokuna" represented Sri Lanka at Vancouver (Canada), Seattle (USA) and Brisbane (Australia) International Film Festivals and was hailed by the western critiques as "At once a modern-day Buddhist parable, a deliciously juicy melodrama and an astonishingly frank depiction of sexual obsession".

Victorian pier moods in pictures

A series of photographs by Senaka Weeraman that reveal an unspoken narrative of a Victorian pier on the south coast of England will be held tomorrow (20) at Suriya Sena Centre, Alwis Place, Colombo 3.

Hastings was a popular resort in the Victorian times. The pier was built between 1869 and 1872, housing arcades, theatres and a promenade literally on the sea.

However in the winter of 2000, the pier was badly damaged by storms and was out of bounds to the public.

But the artist was immediately drawn to the space beneath the pier especially in the way that it changes with the tide, time and light.

Spurned on by the fact that the surface of the pier was prohibited and the space under it restricted due to the tides, the artist decided to climb within the structure of the pier to experience and capture its dynamic and unknown nature from a different perspective.

But unknowingly the artist had misread the tidal current and found himself trapped beneath the pier, with the sea rising around him, with no means of contact or escape.

These photographs are a record of that journey from being caught by the tide to finally chasing it. Senaka Weeraman graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture in 2001. His work investigates issues of conflict, memory, history and race through architectural narratives.

He recently presented his paper to the 'past-presents present-futures' conference at the University of Auckland New Zealand, and the work from his portfolio was featured in the 'Crystal Palace at Sydenham' Exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery and the 'Six Thousand Chair' Art Festival held at the Crystal Palace Park.

He is currently working at ADV Consultants, Colombo.