Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land), the Sri Lankan film that won the prestigious Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, has apparently been withdrawn from screening in Sri Lanka (second article down). The film opened on September 9, but was removed from Sri Lanka’s five main theaters by the National Film Corporation of Sri Lanka on September 20th. The director and producer of the film then requested that the movie be withdrawn from the country’s remaining theaters in protest.
While the Film Corporation claims that the film was withdrawn due to poor box office performance, the director of the film, Vimukthi Jayasundara, argues that it is a form of “unofficial censorship.” According to the BBC Sinhala Website, the film was criticized by a senior officer of the Sri Lankan Navy:
Rear Admiral Weerasekera on September 25th in an article in the Sunday ‘Divaina’ has said that film producers should be labelled as terrorists and hanged.
The Sri Lankan media watchdog Free Media Movement additionally claims that Army officials made veiled threats against Sri Lankan filmmakers critical of the ongoing ethnic conflict:
An article published in an English language daily on 14 September 2005 indicated that films by prominent directors such as Asoka Handagama, Prasanna Vithanage, Sudath Mahaadivulwewa and Vimukthi Jayasundara have been labelled “new terrorism” and “foreign funded cinema” in statements attributed to a military spokesperson.Articles written by military and political leaders criticizing anti-war films as propaganda for separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have started to appear in mainstream newspapers.
In a meeting between two of the filmmakers and high military officials that took place subsequent to the publication of these articles, where they were asked whether they were willing to make films for military propaganda, the filmmakers were told that if war breaks out again they will face repercussions.
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p>According to the Bangkok newspaper The Nation, Jayasundara fled to France to avoid “possible persecution,” but will present his film later this month at the World Film Festival of Bangkok:
The theme of “Sulanga Enu Pinisa” (Forsaken Land) focuses on depression of an economical, spiritual and sexual nature. The misery expressed in the film has links to the decades-long civil war in Sri Lanka, which might have disturbed the army.“If the film has anything to do with my country’s history, it is through its conveyance of the suspended state of being simultaneously without war and without peace – in between the two. I wanted to capture this strange atmosphere,” the director said after receiving an award at the Cannes Film Festival.
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p>For those of you who, like me, are wondering exactly what was so objectionable about the film, a rather meandering article in Sri Lanka’s Sunday Observer entitled “Solemn Thoughts by Wendell Solomons” provides a laundry list of the film’s “anti-human” images:
1. To provide affront to traditional Asian respect for elders, a grey-haired man takes a midnight bath in a river so that the script can present him to the audience with frontal nudity (no matter that Sri Lanka’s rural folk for safety, customarily bathe in rivers during daylight hours.)2. The lead male actor ends up depicted as a buffoon duped by both his friend and a nearby army detachment.
3. A woman drawn into the film to be ravished for sensation before the audience on the low bough of a tree, is visibly with child – some 6 months pregnant.
4. A younger main actress, in her early twenties, is also ravished against a tree. Though applying a woman’s body to such a rough surface is an illogical choice, such portrayal makes for sensation both at home and abroad (it isn’t what a 15-year old youth could peek at on the Internet.) This younger main actress ends up sold to the audience as an adulteress.
5. The more elderly actress in her 30s, who commits suicide at the end of the film, is painted as a frustrated woman aroused by a male body pressing against her in a bus.
6. The tiniest person shown in the film, a girl of 8 years or so, no taller than your shoulder, provides relief to the audience until she is herself debased in front of the audience through unwittingly savouring semen below wall graffiti.
7. The nearby army detachment receives portrayal as a drunken party from which emerge cannabis-use, adultery and torture.
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p>Ok, so the movie seems like kind of a downer, but that justify censorship, threats, and intimidation?
Jayasundara’s next film is rumored to be a heartwarming tale of a Sri Lankan Army troop that prances around the forest on unicorns, bringing Elephant House ice cream to little boys and girls.
savouring semen? What??? Am I reading this right?
DDD: I haven’t seen the movie, but this is from another review:
I’m not really clear on why the girl would be licking “paint” off the ground in the first place, though.
savouring semen
wtf!?!?!
I agree, the taste of paint is over-rated.
Looks to me like this film owes a lot to the French super-noir genre exemplified in such monstrosities as ‘Irreversible’ & ‘Baise Moi’. Euro mondo films at least did not pretend to be Art, but the new French wave celebrates the total collapse of morality without the funniness of Tarantino – extreme exploitation taken to the extreme.
The thing is maybe the French can handle it better, debauchery is after all not only their invention but also their identity. Asian (and other) cultures with their simplicity can only react with shock at such imports.
8 year olds licking semen off the floor, ravishing women against trees?
uh, sounds like you definitely captured strange, pal.
I don’t think “elderly” is necessarily the right word to use here…..
I am by no means a prude but it sounds like the guy’s got a pretty filthy mind. I mean, 8 year olds, for God’s sake…
I saw the film at the Toronto Film Festival. It is incredibly slow, but for the most part quite good and interesting. I have been getting the occasional inflamed comment from angry singhalese people on my website after writing about seeing the film. I think it is pretty impressive he managed to cram as much sex and nudity into a South-Asian film as he did.
I guess that’s my question; is the sex/nudity/vulgar-gross-out-stuff relevant to the point of the movie, or is it just crammed in there for the sake of making aunties gasp? I’m no prude either, but I think “8 year old” and “semen” really are 2 concepts that should not mix… there are laws against that! 😉
I haven’t seen the film. But I just want to take issue with the view that just because a film has something twisted in it, it means the director is twisted himself (I say himself, because twisted films are invariably made by men!)
I don’t know about this movie, maybe it was just in there for shock value. But when I have a big budget, I’m going to fill my movies with violence and I want to make one film with lots of sex too. I don’t want everyone thinking I must be a bitter, twisted freak. No matter how accurate that is.
I think I’d need to watch the film again to really comment on whether the sex is there with a purpose or not. I think the first time you watch it, the lack of dialog and and slow pace really make it a challenge to focus on what is going on on-screen. That said, the film seems well thought out. I don’t think anything is there purely for shock.
Personally I didn’t think Irreversible was exploitative in the way that “Baise moi” was (though I didn’t much care for either film); I think Bellucci’s rape sequence was so graphically violent– as opposed to the somewhat titillating manner in which many a rape sequence is conceptualized on film, particularly in Hindi cinema– that the message: that the rape was about extreme violence, and not merely a situation “about” sex in some sense, was not lost…
And to think, that in my naivete I had not recognised what Batti tastes on the floor of an abandoned building is not seminal fluid. But now that I know its not white paint too but some paint(coming from the bottle near) that Batti licks with her finger…. dont be too stupid to think it’s seminal fluid!!!!ahhh…Sri Lankans….
I am sorry that some of you have misinterpreted the filmmaker’s intention. Any film in the world is not supposed to be a whole truth for a whole nation. Jean-Luc Godard, the great french filmmaker has once named his film “A Married Woman” and the French Government forced him changing it into THE MARRIED WOMAN.
Vimukhti’s film is called THE FORSAKEN LAND and its portrait is not supposed to be all about a specific nation. It can be anywhere in the world which is imperfect.
Focus too much on Sex will miss the point. The filmmaker said on the interview in Bangkok when inquired on the subject of that scene involving the little girl. Lots of paint’s bottle were in that scene. Some were spilled on the floor already. Semen wouldn’t stay as liquid. Please be kind and take into consideration before insulting anybody Pervert. Pervert men can’t make this kind of visual poetry.