VISAKESA Chandrasekaram is a lawyer, academic, writer and director whose passion for human rights drives his creativity and career.
His film, Munnel, will screen at the 44th Durban Film Festival which runs from July 20 to 30.
He has made two award-wining feature films – Sayapethi Kusuma (Frangipani) and Paangshu (Earth).
Chandrasekaram has published two novels – Tigers Don’t Confess and The King and the Assassin.
He has also written and directed several stage plays, including Forbidden Area, which won the Gratiean Prize - an annual literary prize for the best work of literary writing in English by a resident of Sri Lanka.
Chandrasekaram has worked in Sri Lanka as a human rights lawyer, and in Australia as a consultant to the the Government of New South Wales. He currently works as a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Colombo.
In all of these ventures, the 53-year-old seemingly draws his inspiration from working in the field of human rights.
Chandrasekaram said he was born and brought up in Sri Lanka by parents of mixed-ethnicities.
“My mother is a Sinhalese and father a Tamil; so I speak both languages; have family and friends from both groups, and make films in both languages. My parents were government health workers; and they were transferred from hospital to hospital. Because of this, my childhood was spent in various parts of the country. When I was 11, I won a scholarship to the Royal College, then considered as the best boy’s school in the country.
“After high school, I secured entrance to Colombo University to study law, and now I teach in the same faculty. Later I worked as a human rights lawyer, during the peak of the civil war, defending political prisoners arrested under the counter-terrorism laws. Later I moved to Australia and lived there for 17 years working and studying. About five years ago, I returned to Sri Lanka with several postgraduate degrees, including a PhD.”
Chandrasekaram said he was always passionate about film.
“My father used to take us to watch movies in the local cinemas. Those days we didn’t miss any new Sinhala or Tamil movie.
“I actually left school and home to work in films as an assistant director when I was 17. It was only three years after the ‘Black July’ riots and the film industry was gasping for life. Half of the cinemas and the only film studio of the country was burned down to the ground because they were owned by the Tamils. To make things worst, television stopped people from going to movies.
“Unable to find investors, many actors and technicians started cooperate productions, and they recruited apprentices with no experience to these film productions, because they did not have to pay us. I learnt filmmaking in the old way with film reel cameras. After realising that films won’t pay my bills, I returned to my school to complete my high school certificate and later to enter university,” he said.
Chandrasekaram said working within human rights enlightened him.
“Working in the human rights law sector exposed me to horrendous levels of injustice – long term detention, sexual abuse and torture of prisoners. And there were so many other mundane stories the prisoners would reveal. Also being a man of a mixed ethnic background, I was exposed to the stories of the both sides of the ethnically divided line.
“I first started telling stories of the war. My first major work was a stage play on a suicide bomber. I realised the power of art to share stories and challenge dogmatic views of the people. I also wrote fiction. It took a long time to return to movie making because I needed to collect funds.
“My first movie, Frangipani, made a big contribution to Sri Lanka’s queer rights discourse, and still it has been used for educational purposes. My second movie Paangshu was on enforced disappearance, another taboo subject, and the third one Munnel is another movie centred around a human rights theme. As you can see, I really haven’t given up human rights for movie making.”
Chandrasekaram said Munnel was significant in many ways.
“Firstly the story, which is about a former Tamil Tiger rebel returning home after the war and pending a criminal trial against him. His main mission is to find his school time sweetheart, who disappeared in the last leg of the war. Beyond the court room drama, the film reveals serious human rights violations unleashed by the state and the non-state actors, while our protagonist converges all his energy to reunite with his lover.
“An open exposition of this topic has been self-centred by many local filmmakers and storytellers in the backdrop of the power wielded by oppressive regimes and extremist political groups, armed with draconian laws such as counter-terrorism laws and other laws (which) prohibit our freedom of expression. I can get away, and at least so far, I have been able to get away by bringing these provocative themes to the local cinema, perhaps because of my status as a lawyer and an academic.
“Secondly the process: Munnel was made in the north of Sri Lanka which was heavily affected by the three-decade long civil war. After the war, the region is recovering fast, despite continuous military occupation coupled with surveillance and harassment by the police and the military. Young people wanted to tell their stories with a camera but there is little opportunity.
“Although it could have been easy for me to hire an experienced crew from the Sinhala speaking South of the country, I decided to go for fresh blood in the North. I tried my best to fill the positions in my cast and crew list by engaging members from the Tamil speaking North or East of the Island. It is a huge risk to take, but it certainly paid off. They all gave all their energy to this film. It is truly a home-grown Tamil film,” said Chandrasekaram
The Diff returns to the Suncoast CineCentre after a three-year hiatus due to the national lockdown.
The festival, presented by the University of KwaZulu Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts, will showcase 90 films from 54 countries.
The programme includes films and documentaries, which featured at the Cannes Film Festival, the Sundance Festival, the Venice Film Festival, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam, among others. For the full programme vist festival website.