A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, July 2, 2017
Exorcising Demons In Paradise: Remarks On Jude Ratnam’s Movie Screened At Cannes
This evening at the ICES Colombo we saw a very powerful movie: DEMONS IN
PARADISE, directed by Jude Ratnam. I am so very grateful that the
director invited us to attend its first screening in Sri Lanka. I hope
it gets shown and discussed everywhere.
Dayan Jayatilleka always
said that the healing process and reconciliation will start not with
accountability hearings a la Geneva, but with the arts.
This
movie holds a mirror before us all. It forces one to look squarely at
the violence that each of these island’s communities is capable of
inflicting, supporting and enabling, not only on other communities but
on each other, within one’s own community.
Starting with July ’83,
via a train journey of escape to Jaffna from mob violence in the
capital city which the government of the day did nothing to stop, Jude
Ratnam ‘turns the searchlight inwards’ and confronts the horror that the
LTTE visited on other Tamil militant groups and innocent civilians, and
the Tamil community’s tolerance, and even support of it. A former
Tiger, now a middle aged man says in bewilderment, “I can’t understand
our community. How could they give us Coke while we were killing our own
people?”
It is a courageous self-examination of a dark past which has not been attempted before.
The
movie also features an interview with the photographer who took the
iconic photo of a naked Tamil man just before he was beaten to death by a
laughing Sinhala mob. He was asked what he felt as a Sinhalese when he
took the photo. The photographer says that he knew right from wrong, and
all he could do at that time was to take the picture so he could tell
that story to society at large.
The movie shows emotional moments of great humanity that humbles and offers hope.