Gehenu Lamayi in Sri Lanka

After what seems to have been an eternity, it was refreshing to hear a Prime Minister who knew what she was talking about and whom she was talking to. Last Friday, 26 September, Dr. Harini Amarasuriya was the Chief Guest at the Sri Lanka premiere of the 4K restoration of Gehenu Lamayi. Reflecting on the film, Amarasuriya noted its director Sumitra Peries as a trendsetter and a trailblazer. She went on to add that she was more than a director, arguing that she broadened our understanding of feminism in South Asia.

- BY UDITHA DEVAPRIYA

I thought the tribute was well articulated, because it touched on three points which scholars of the Sinhala cinema have missed out. The first is that Sumitra's ascent as a film director followed a trajectory that was very different to all her contemporaries, bar none, in Sri Lanka and South Asia. Unlike the other distinguished figures of women's filmmaking in the region, Sumitra was educated in the West as an editor and found employment in Sri Lanka as an editor and an assistant director. In this, as I noted in my tribute to Sumitra after her passing in 2023, she became a precursor to the likes of Mira Nair.

The second is that in her choice of source text for her first film, she deliberately overlooked the conventional choices of the day. When Lester Peries selected Golu Hadawatha as the first of three films he made for Ceylon Theatres, in 1968, Karunasena Jayalath tended to be viewed negatively by the country's critical establishment. One of Sumitra's overarching achievements - which almost no biographer or critic has commented on - was her ability to transform the most mundane, sentimental texts into living works of art. Jayalath's novels resonated well with popular readers, and in Sumitra's hands, Gehenu Lamayi became more than just a teenage romance, a morality tale of class and love.

The third point is Sumitra's ability to even out the political and popular aspects of the story. Watching Gehenu Lamayi on the big screen, I was struck at some of the scenes which were suffused there is no other word for it by a feminine sensibility.