Tharindu Ramanayake is an up and coming young film director who has taken a dramatic turn into a little-known venture in Sri Lanka, dance films. His cinematic creation merged contemporary dance and traditional dance forms to showcase the tragedy of a sea oyster following the aftermath of the Express Pearl disaster. The dance film has received many plaudits and has been showcased in many Film Festivals in Asia and Europe.
‘This is not a pearl’ won in the Experimental International Category at the 2024 Big Syn International Film Festival in London and has been nominated for various other Festivals including the South Asian Film Festival 2024 and in the Documentary Section at the prestigious 23rd Imagine India International Film Festival in Madrid, Spain among many others. Tharindu has a background in filmmaking and has made several short films, a full length film and music videos. This is the first dance film he has done and one of the first in Sri Lanka to have been acclaimed in the international circuit.
Filmmaking
His foray into filmmaking started when he began studying drama and theatre for his degree, later on he received a scholarship to study at the Rabindra bharati University, in Kolkata. He got another scholarship to study film direction and script writing at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute and was the first Sri Lankan to achieve this accolade.
Youth Observer sat with this talented filmmaker to delve deep into his artistic process and career in filmmaking.
Dance films are a little known genre in Sri Lanka so what inspired Tharindu to make a dance film? “The main dancer in the film called me and said she would like to do a dance film” said Tharindu.” I have danced as a child, so I wanted to experiment because no one has attempted to do a dance film before.
Once I researched the idea, I realised this genre was not popular in Sri Lanka and I was eager to try out this new concept”, he said. Tharindu was influenced by Maya Derrin who was the pioneer of this genre.
“But the way I conceptualised the film, blending politics, dance and environmental issues is something new, I didn’t have anything to influence me. I wanted my dance film to have the vibe of a documentary; however, in Sri Lanka the documentary has a standard prototype. A narration plays in the background, with interviews. But, internationally documentaries have evolved. The lines are blurred between fiction films and documentaries, sometimes we can’t figure out whether it’s a film or a documentary. This is what I aspired to do with my work although it is a fictional story I take props from the real incident and work accordingly to bridge it closer to reality”, Tharindu said.
Environmental catastrophe
The Express Pearl disaster was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes that have occurred in Sri Lanka in recent years, a true environmentalist at heart the plight of the environment and the animals that lived in the sea touched Tharindu. As an aspiring film director he questioned why no one voiced this issue through cinematic mediums. “I believe the more we connect to nature our true selves emerge” said Tharindu.
“When this catastrophe occurred in Sri Lanka I was in India. While I was going through the pictures I noticed a fish whose gills were embedded with plastic particles. In the article it said ‘these are not pearls’. That was my inspiration says Tharindu. “Three words came to my mind as I saw this, Sri Lanka is called Pearl of the Indian Ocean and the name of the ship was Express Pearl and the plastic that glistened looked like pearls. That’s how I turned the fish into an oyster and wondered instead of the pearl if a plastic particle entered the oyster what would be the outcome”, he said.
In the film a pearl oyster living happily in the Indian Ocean encounters a ‘strange pearl’ the Pearl Express which completely changed the environment where it lived. The pearl that she had been protecting gets corrupt and turns black with oil and is destroyed. When the oyster floats away it tries to find its pearl only to encounter many little plastic pearls and it puts it inside only to find that these are plastic pearls and then it dies!
Cinematic quality
The cinematic quality of the dance film is highly captivating that one wonders whether the Film maker was trying to downplay the tragedy that befell our oceans. “Didn’t you feel sad at the plight of the oyster pearl?” asks Tharindu. “I wanted to evoke a sense of pity. I believe through this film I was able to summon these emotions rather than seeing the disaster. From smearing colour in the face to depict the contorted dancing, my intention was not to beautify the dancer, but rather to bring about the emotions of the pearl oyster” said Tharindu. The dance film has a documentary feel to it with the real footage capturing the disaster as it actually happened. Tharindu wants the audience to feel that it is a real situation without getting caught up in the cinematography and the aesthetics of his production.
The film incorporates a range of dance genres, the dancer Ama Nethmi is a contemporary dancer. However, the production was not to restrict to one form of dance. The main purpose of the dance was to tell a story, animal movements and kathak dancing were acted out.
Towards the end of the film, many viewers felt that they didn’t see a dancer there but an animal writhing in pain In one instance the oyster tries to fan out the engulfing flames, according to Tharindu this was inspired by the Jataka tale where a squirrel mother tried to empty the ocean with its tail to save her child, which is an impossible situation. The oyster in a similar fashion tries to save her precious pearl.
“I don’t make films to give a message” quips Tharindu, “a message is naturally conveyed but that is not the sole purpose. I expressed what I felt, an environmental tragedy had befallen the country and action should be taken to rectify it”, he said. The long-term consequence of this tragedy is irreparable. To this very day we are probably eating salt, laden with micro plastics.
So what does the future hold for this passionate young filmmaker? “I might do another dance film, purely based on dance because ‘This is not a Pearl’ falls into the category of an experimental documentary film more so than a dance film,” added Tharindu. “I am someone who likes to diversify my creations; I don’t like to stick to just one thing”, Tharindu says. The future looks bright for Tharindu as he gears up to dive into other unchartered territories in film while capturing the hearts and minds of his audience.
