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The future of the Sinhalese film industry

What is to be the future of the Sinhalese Film Industry? What sort of direction will our films take in the years to come? Will there be a change or a deviation in the pattern of picture making already established. These questions are difficult to answer with any kind of certainty.

To answer them, one not only has to be a student of the local industry and a critic but also a prophet.

Dr Lester James Peries

One can say this however. The type of Sinhalese film we are going to get will depend not on the talent (or lack of it) of our producers, our directors and our writers but on their attitude to film making. If they consider that making pictures is a business like the making of safety matches or shoes then we can be pretty sure about the sort of films we are going to produce. If the demand of the box office is to be their sale consideration, our future will be a repetition of the past.

Box office

Of course picture making is big business. It costs plenty of money, and time and the skill of a large number of people. Investments must be protected, profits must be made. Producers can with justification point out that all film making countries operate their business on the demands of the box office. Take America, or India or Britain they would say. They make pictures not for fun but for money. All very true. But there is one big difference. Let us take Hollywood where film making is really big business. The majority of Hollywood films are purely commercial, fashioned deliberately to cater to the demands of the box office. No one disputes that. Most Hollywood producers want profits. But some of them have a sense of idealism too. Tey tackle occasionally a daring story, some unusual theme. They introduce new techniques to the art of the motion picture. They present controversial subjects. They even risk their money by breaking every box office formula they themselves have helped to establish; and what is the result? Each year from Hollywood we get half a dozen first-rate pictures; and occasionally a masterpiece.

These men realise that profits alone, important though they are, cannot ensure the future of the industry.

There must be experiment. Reasonable risks must be taken if only to promote the interests of the industry. Above all I feel they have a sense of obligation to the medium and the public they serve. For it must be realised that the motion picture is a medium not merely of entertainment but of instruction and persuasion. It cannot only debase the public taste. It can elevate it too. It might be well for some of our producers to realise that they are playing about with the most powerful medium of our time.

Little credit

Now if we turn to our country what can we show? We have ten years of picture making but little to our credit. A visiting American who once conducted a survey of our industry is supposed to have remarked after seeing three Sinhalese films that we probably make the worst pictures in the world. It is not a very flattering comment on our industry.

It might be said in extenuation that ours is a young industry. This is rubbish. Ten years is a long time, long enough for the Sinhalese film to have grown up.

What of the technical standards of our films in the future? Will they improve? They certainly won't if our producers take up the attitude that anything is good enough for Ceylon.

Far more important for the future of our industry is for us directors to master the language of the cinema. Our films tend to be photographed stage plays. A story told through dialogue is not a film. It is a play. It does not belong to the screen but to the stage. In cinema, the images are supreme. If the picture does not talk, then our cinema as an art is doomed.

“A picture is better than a thousand words” says an old Chinese proverb. How they true this is when applied to a really good film.

Portraying people

Finally and most important of all is that the future of our industry will depend on the extent to which we use the stories which are rooted in our own soil; stories which portray our own people, their hopes, their fears and aspirations and in our own beautiful landscapes and settings. Our film can never be called truly Sinhalese until all the pernicious foreign influences which have dominated them are ruthlessly stamped out.

This would imply a revolution, in almost all departments of picture-making, in acting, make up, costumes, sets and music. Will our future films take this new direction? Here again our producers alone can answer the question.

What of the future? At the moment the future looks bleak enough. There are so many more problems not touched on in this article which will beset us for many years.

There is the position of the independent producer who will be forced to extinction unless a more equitable percentage of the box office receipts is given to his product. Government help and interest is vital at this stage if the industry is to be stable.

An alert press is indispensable and here one can pay a tribute to the local press and critics who have never hesitated to expose the sham and the humbug and have really paved the way for better films.

But in the last resort the future of our industry lies not with the press who can only help and guide nor, I make bold to say, with the public. It is with the producers who make our pictures. What is their attitude going to be? Are they going to be perpetually bullied by the demands of the Gallery? Will they give the public what it wants or what is good for them? For on their answer to these questions will depend not only the future of our industry but also the destiny of the Sinhala Cinema.

(Reproduced from Piyasena Wickramage's book ‘Lester James Peries: Collected Articles’ published by Bhadraji Foundation, Ratmalana: 2000.)

 

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