Flying Fish (film)

Flying Fish
Directed by Sanjeewa Pushpakumara
Produced by Manohan Nanyakkara & Sanjeewa Pushpakumara
Screenplay by Sanjeewa Pushpakumara & Chinthana Dharamadasa
Story by Sanjeewa Pushpakumara
Starring Kaushalya Fernando
Rathnayaka Marasinghe
Chaminda Sampath Jayaweera
Gayesha Perera
Siththi Mariyam
Sanjeewa Dissanayake
Sumathy Sivamohan
Nilanka Dahanayake
Thissa Bandaranayaka
Wasanthy Ranwala
Mohammed Ali Rajabdeen
Music by Tharindu Priyankara de Silva
Cinematography Vishwajith Karunarathna
Edited by Ajith Ramanayake
Release dates
  • January 28, 2011 (2011-01-28) (Rotterdam)
Running time
 119 minutes
Country Sri Lanka
Language Sinhala and Tamil

Flying Fish (Sinhalese: ඉගිල්ලෙන මලුවො) is a 2011 anthology film directed by Sri Lankan filmmaker Sanjeewa Pushpakumara. It was produced with the financial support of the Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).[1][2] The film made its world premiere on January 28, 2011, as part of the Rotterdam festival's Tiger Awards Competition.Film has been noted for its political value, beautiful cinematography, long takes, and shocking violence

The film draws on stories from the director's life in his hometown of Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, where Flying Fish was shot.[3]

Synopsis

The film weaves together three narratives set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Wasana and Soldier

A young Sinhalese village woman falls in love with an army soldier and becomes pregnant. The couple attempts to abort the child but fails. While they are making love in the ruins of an abandoned building, her father sees them. While he does not confront her about what he has seen, the scene haunts him continuously. As the war intensifies, adult villagers are recruited into the civil defense force to protect the village border. Among these recruits is her father, who is punished and humiliated by the soldiers from her lover's platoon for not being on guard one day. Demoralized, he shoots himself inside an empty bunker. Meanwhile, the soldier and his platoon receive a transfer to a distant posting, leaving the woman in great agony. Tortured by her father's suicide and her rage at the soldier who leaves her pregnant, she flees the village.

Son and Mother

A recently widowed Sinhalese woman lives with her eight children in a remote village where the armed tension between the government army and the L.T.T.E., or Tamil Tigers escalates. Stricken with extreme poverty, she becomes a curd vendor. She also becomes involved in an affair with a young man who owns a shop in the village. Her eldest son is in his first year of high school. To support the family, he works in the local fish market selling fish. Meanwhile, he falls in love with a girl at his school. He is humiliated when their relationship is revealed to the school. Meanwhile, rumors spread about his mother’s affair. One day, the boy sees his mother having sexual intercourse with her lover in a broken house. The enraged boy stabs his mother in front of his siblings the same evening.

Tamil Girl

A Tamil schoolgirl experiences her first menstrual period while in a bus on her way home after school. This is revealed when an army soldier subjects her to a security check at an army-controlled roadblock. Her father is a clerk and her mother is a housewife; they live in a rural village in Eastern Sri Lanka, where the war between the state army and the L.T.T.E. has been intensifying. The Tamil Tigers secretly conduct their propaganda lectures in schools, demanding a separate Tamil Eelam state and justifying their war against the Sinhala-dominated southern government army. One night, the L.T.T.E. forcibly enter the Tamil girl’s house and demand a sum that the family can scarcely afford. They threaten to conscript the girl if her family fails to pay the money. On the night that her parents are supposed to pay the demanded money, the child slips away from the house just as the L.T.T.E visit them. Since the L.T.T.E. get neither the money nor the girl, they gun down her parents.

Reception and controversy

Flying Fish has been highly praised by renowned film personalities Tony Rayns and Ian Christie, to name some, below are excerpts from their reviews:

Film banned by Sri Lankan Government in Sri Lanka and internationally

The film made its Sri Lankan premiere in Colombo on July 11, 2013, despite having been initially released in 2011. The film sparked immediate controversy, leading the government to ban it. The government claims that the film “insults the security forces” and that it illegally used images of the Sri Lankan military uniform, both of which Pushpakumara denies. According to BBC and Associated Press reports, the Sri Lankan police are currently conducting a “fact-finding investigation” into the film and have questioned its cast and production crew. Local Sinhala news sources reported that even Pushpakumara’s mother, who prepared meals for the cast and crew during the filming, has been questioned by authorities. Sri Lanka's Free Media Movement has been variously cited as criticizing both the censorship of the film and this investigation, stating that they represented the government’s desire to “militarise arts and culture.” There is, however, no trace of such a statement emanating from the organization.

Awards

Festivals

References

  1. ↑ "Hubert Bals Fund supports 24 film projects in thirteen countries", International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2011
  2. ↑ "Profile: Hubert Bals Fund", International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2011
  3. ↑ "Tiger Awards Spotlight: Flying Fish", Interview with Director Sanjeewa Pushpakumara
  4. ↑
  5. ↑ Review, 5th Cinema Digital Seoul Film Festival (page 46-47), 2011.
  6. ↑ "Sight and Sound"
  7. ↑ "Awards ceremony at the 2nd Saint Petersburg International Kinoforum", St. Petersburg International Film Festival – KINOFORUM, July 16, 2011
  8. ↑ Martin Blaney, "Black Blood, A Separation triumph at Kinoforum", Screen Daily, July 16, 2011
  9. ↑ Susitha R. Fernando, "Sanjeewa wins Best Director", Daily Mirror, July 17, 2011
  10. ↑ "'New Territories' competition program will be a challenge for the audience", St. Petersburg International Film Festival "KINOFORUM", June 24, 2011
  11. ↑ Bryce J. Renninger, "Rotterdam Unleashes List of Fourteen Tiger Award Competition Films", indieWIRE, January 10, 2011
  12. ↑ Todd Brown, "Complete Tiger Awards Competition Announced For Rotterdam 2011", Twitch, January 9, 2011
  13. ↑ "SIFF Announces Film Competition Lineups For 2011 Festival", Seattle International Film Festival, April 28, 2011
  14. ↑ "Pesaro New Cinema Competition", 47a Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema, June 19–27, 2011
  15. ↑ "IFF Ars Independent", Ars Independent International Film Festival 2011 Katowice

External links

Interview with director

Reviews

Film festivals and screenings

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