Sulochana Dissanayake lives in a crowded house. There’s an elephant on her porch and the decapitated head of a giant on her dining room table. There’s a herd of animals – a zebra, chimpanzee, a ‘gangster’ penguin and another, smaller elephant – and a host of characters right out of Sri Lankan folklore (old Mahadanamutta … Continue reading
This is the question: How can he reconcile his love for jazz with a deep appreciation of Sri Lankan ritual music? For Dr. Sumudi Suraweera the answer was to literally fuse the two by building his own ‘hybrid’ drum kit. Paired with the sweet, clear notes of the piano and the heavy thrum of the … Continue reading
One imagines that somewhere on Prasad Pereira’s list of life’s essentials, you’d find ‘watching movies’ noted down just under ‘air,’ ‘water,’ and ‘food.’ “I’ve always been mad about cinema since I was really, really young and film making is very important to me,” he says, “it’s more than a career, it’s one of those things … Continue reading
Bowing before Saraswati for a few minutes at the start of every school term, Hindu schoolchildren in India pray for her blessing on their books and their efforts. Lankan writer Yasmine Gooneratne asks much the same of the goddess, though in her case, she is actually writing the books themselves. “There was a point in my … Continue reading
Like so many little girls, 10-year-old Shehara Liyanage was fascinated by her mother’s wardrobe. Shey longed to be properly grown up and inside that cupboard were all the props she needed to pretend she already was: outsize heels to totter around in, make-up to be inexpertly slathered on and beautiful sarees to wind around herself. “It … Continue reading
Asha De Vos and her watch have been all but inseparable for nearly 15 years. A gift from her father, well-known architect Ashley De Vos, the watch was an acknowledgement of what her family recognized as Asha’s “strong desire to be at least five minutes early to anything I attended or did.” Punctuality, however, isn’t … Continue reading
Don’t call Jay Jay a magician – he’d rather be known as an illusionist. (He considers the latter designation the “more classy” of the two.) Whatever you dub him, it doesn’t make what Jay Jay accomplishes any less clever – employing suggestion and misdirection, artifice and guile he convinces you to believe, however briefly, in … Continue reading
The day Sebastian came into his possession, viola maestro Ashan Pillai found himself watching a film about a twice martyred Christian. It is written that St. Sebastian first survived being shot through with arrows before succumbing to a brutal clubbing for daring to criticise the Emperor of Rome. (In later years, he would be called … Continue reading
Over the course of a long career in cinema, Sumitra Peries estimates she may have edited anywhere between 10 to 15 movies. These include films such as the groundbreaking ‘Gamperaliya’ (1964) which was directed by her husband, the iconic filmmaker Lester James Peries and ‘Gehenu Lamai’ (1978), the film that marked her own directorial debut. On ‘Gehenu … Continue reading
Saskia Fernando keeps her art gallery filled with exquisite things. However, her most prized possession has never been on display. Instead, the delicate miniature sculpture is kept nestled inside her jewellery box. The statue of a venerable teacher with his student is a netsuke, a form of miniature sculpture that was invented in Japan in … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 