President to inaugurate Buddhist Film Festival

Priyanka KURUGALA

The inaugural program of the Buddhist Film Festival for the 2600th Sri Sambuddathwa Jayanthi 2011, will be held under the patronage of President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Presidential Secretariat hall in Colombo, at 10.15 am, on June 22 media coordinator Edwin Ariyadasa said at a press conference, at the BMICH yesterday. The organizers will award gifts to all participants who had produced local and foreign films, for the second Buddhist film festival in 2010.

Most leading members of the Buddhist clergy in Sri Lanka and other Buddhist countries, will participate at the inaugural ceremony. To coincide with the 2600th Sri Sambuddathwa Jayanthi, the organizers expect to produce a film on the life of the Bodhisathwa Siddhartha Gautama. Organizers will recreate the ancient cities of Kapilavasthu and Lumbini in Bandarawela for the shooting of the film. The script writers of the film are Edwin Ariyadasa and Saman Weeraman. These model location sets will not be broken down after shooting of the film, but used to establish Buddhist centres.

The organizers expect Sri Lanka to become the centre of Buddhist films of the world in 2011, he said.