- Vimukthi Jayasundara
Vimukthi Jayasundara was born in
Ratnapura in southernSri Lanka . He was ajournalist ,film critic and writer for the screen, and he attended the Institute for Film and Television inPune, India .After making "The Land Of Silence", a documentary in black and white about the victims of the civil war which was selected for several festivals in
Marseilles ,Rotterdam andBerlin , Vimukthi Jayasundara studied inFrance at the Fresnoy School of Art before becoming a resident at the "Cinéfondation of the Festival de Cannes" in 2003.In 2004 he directed his first feature, "La Terre Abandonnée". Vimukthi Jayasundara's picture, which took the 2005
Cannes Film Festival "Camera d'Or" for best first film (an award previously won byDennis Hopper andSpike Lee ), is done with sparse dialogue and haunting "tableaux" of the isolated rural landscape. "Land" has some of the strange poetry ofIngmar Bergman 's great 1968 anti-war film "Shame", but it's a more cryptic, exotic work, burningly immediate yet imbued with some of the quality of timeless fable. Only 27, Jayasundara seems a moviemaker of high promise. His "Forsaken Land", a work of surprising sophistication and cinematic eloquence, may signal the arrival of a major international film talent.He is the first Sri Lankan who became to win the prestigious "Camera d’Or" award for Best First Film at the world renowned Cannes Film Festival for his
Sinhalese language film "Sulanga Enu Pinisa/The Forsaken Land". He previously directed a documentary called "The Land of Silence" in 2001 and a short film, "Empty for Love", in 2002.He says:
“If "The Forsaken Land" has something to do with my country’s history, it is especially 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… For me, filmmaking is an ideal vehicle for expressing the mental stress people experience as a result of the emptiness and indecisiveness they feel in their lives. With the film, I wanted to examine emotional isolation in a world where war, peace and God have become abstract notions."
Fact|date=August 2008Vimukthi Jayasundara was bestowed with the “"Kala Kirthi" title by the
President of Sri Lanka . "Fallen From the Sky", his second long-length feature film, is actually in post-production. It was initiated by "Le Films Hatari, Unlimited" and co-produced by "Arte France Cinema".
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