PAANGSHU: REDISCOVERING OLD DIMENSION

Paangshu, Visakesa Chandrasekaram’s second feature, brings in a new dimension to Sri Lankan cinema by rediscovering old, nearly forgotten values. It has a degree of cinematic subtlety uncharacteristic of our new generation filmmakers.

- Gamini Akmeemana

This quality was noticeable in ‘Sathpethi Kusuma’, his first feature which explored a love triangle from an unusual (gay-heterosexual) perspective. But this conclusion is drawn from the filmmaker’s stylistic approach, rather than from his themes.

Instead of talking of a new dimension, we should call it rediscovering an old dimension – the almost meditative mix of lyricism softened realism and poetry that was so characteristic of Lester James Pieris and Satyajit Ray, followed by the ideologically tempered work of Dharmasena Pathiraja (and occasionally in the work of outsiders such as Sugathapala Senarath Yapa) in Sri Lanka; in India, many notable filmmakers took this path including Shyam Benegal.

When Lester James Pieris created an independent cinematic idiom for Sri Lankan cinema with Rekhawa in 1956, and Rai did the same for Indian cinema with Pather Panchali in 1955, both knew what the Italian neorealists were doing in Europe (Lucino Visconti’s Ossessione made in 1943 is now generally accepted as the first neorealist movie). The quality that struck them as the most important in this new style of European filmmaking was the inherent humanism, and every movie they made reflected that endearing quality in simple, straightforward cinematic terms.

Sri Lankan cinema, battered during the turbulent 1980s by ethnic hatred, Milton Friedman economics, and a post-1980s generation of filmgoers who failed to see movies as an essential part of the country’s culture, leave alone an art form, was left adrift.