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Robert Crusz, writer and film-maker, takes a candid look at the background story and location experiences of the new Cinema Buddhi production
Travails of shooting the sad tale of the ‘searchers’
Bodee Keerthisena's idol and mentor is the great John Cassavetes, who made those unique improvisational, gritty, 'cinema-verity' style films on a shoestring budget with friends and borrowed equipment. Boodee makes his films in a similar, non-commercial way, but he is his own person with his own unique style.

With one successful movie under his belt (the Veils of Maya - 1995), and after a long film-making adventure on the road in Sri Lanka and Italy, he has just completed his second feature - Boungirno Italia - about young South Asians, illegally and dangerously crossing European borders in search of a better life in the First World, especially to Italy.

Boodee and his friends are part of a generation who lived through the rapid changes in Sri Lanka's social, political, economic and cultural landscape since the late 1960s. Many of them were children during the 1971- armed insurgency of educated but unemployed rural youth, disgruntled by the broken promises of socialist planned economics. Then came the sweeping and radical transformation of the country after 1977.

The free-market, and the free rein given to capitalist carpetbaggers and robber barons changed the country forever. Along with this came the rising ethnic tensions culminating in the genocide against the Tamils in 1983 and the start of the separatist war which still rages in the north and east, destroying young lives on both sides by the thousands. Another insurgency in 1989 destroyed more youth. Sri Lanka became an unkind and unjust place to live in, especially for those without the economic, social and educational resources needed to survive in Sri Lanka or to emigrate legally to kinder climes. They had to stick it out - either join the army and earn a living, or earn a living by criminal means. The other option was illegal emigration.

Boodee was one of the fortunate few who had the resources to pursue his dream to become, first a musician and later film-maker. He studied and lived for many years in New York. But each time he came home - home being the highly populated and crazily vibrant southwestern coast of the island with all its economic, cultural and political contradictions - he found more of his friends missing. They'd taken the risk and gone abroad - many of them illegally.

Also, on his flights to and from New York, Boodee would meet, talk to, and get to know the housemaids who, in virtually slave labour conditions, work in the oil-rich Middle East states, to to ensure 'better' lives for their husbands, children and extended families. These experiences then, were the first seeds from which the idea for Boungiorno Italia grew sometime in 1993. The story revolves around a group of young musicians - rock 'n rollers who venerate Bob Marley and wish to become a famous band.

But their lives on the lowest rungs of Sri Lankan society, with its poverty and violence, offer them little if no opportunities. Friends returning from Italy talk about the money to be made. But the journey there is not straightforward because it's not legal. The film follows them on their dangerous journey with all its hazards, comradeship, tears, laughter and also death. When in Naples, Italy, the appalling conditions of their day-to-day living, the hard labour, but also the basic human frailties, strengths, loves and hates, are also shown. On returning to Sri Lanka, somehow they seem to be better equipped to survive either in Sri Lanka, or to return to Italy, this time as legal immigrants.

How then was this film to be made ? The search for funds was not easy. Starting out on an initial budget calculation of about US$ 100,000, which later escalated, the money came in little by little. Boodee is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts, New York City, and he made many friends in the filmmaking sector of the USA and Europe. Many of them came to his help, working only for expenses.

Among them were the cinematographer, Moshe Ben Yaish, an American Film Institute graduate; the assistant cameraman Cyril Thomas, a French born New Yorker, who assisted on Geetha Mehta's controversial film "Fire", the two A.D's, Tim Dussen from Berlin and his wife Julitha from Poland, both students of New York University; the composer Lakshman Joseph De Saram, another Sir Lankan from the 'New York scene' and a Julliard graduate; and the animator/cartoonist Fanny Wanigasinghe of mixed Sri Lankan - German parentage.

In Sri Lanka, many personal friends among the acting and cinema technicians fraternity helped Boodee. Among them was the veteran Sri Lankan cinematographer K.A. Dharmasena - a man of vast experience and skills and a true lighting/camera artist. Many big box office film stars also pitched into work with Boodee- for example the actresses Sangeetha Weerasinghe and Veena Jayakody, and the actors Sanath Gunathileke, Ravindra Randeniya, W. Jayasiri, Kamal Adaarachchi and Mahendra Perara.

The Sri Lankan segment of the shooting was a cake walk when compared to the hazards the team faced in having to complete the Italian phase of the film, which had to be shot in the winter. For a start one of the leading actors was arrested in Sri Lanka, tried and jailed for a crime he vehemently denied he committed. The script had to be re-arranged to accommodate his non-availability.

It was not financially possible to take a large contingent of people and equipment to Italy. Hence all the equipment and ancillary crew had to be arranged in Italy. For this, the Lankan 'emigres' in Naples, about whom this film was about, gave Boodee support both in financial and practical terms. Some of them even acted in the film. They opened up their homes to the film crew - some of these homes were illegal squats.

Being unable to hire professional Italian production managers who knew all the 'ropes', the team found themselves constantly falling over the bureaucratic obstacles of the Naples municipality when it came to filling in forms to obtain permission to shoot a film in Italy. In many instances the desired locations were not made available. Other difficulties followed. People got ill. Time and money were running short. It came to a time when parts of the original script had to be put aside, and Boodee and his team, started writing on the move.

While preserving the basic concepts of the movie, scenes were improvised, actors acted on their instincts, and shots were grabbed thankfully without losing technical quality. Carefully hidden dialogue cue cards a la Brando littered the locations!

Back in Sri Lanka the struggle to complete the film continued. Technical hiccups had to be sorted out, some scenes had to be re-shot, the animal cartoon sequences had to be completed, the music score finalized and worst of all more money had to be found.

But Boodee kept his cool - the guerrilla filmmaker in him knew that the cash would come. Always bursting with new ideas he kept working, earning small amounts from television commercials and documentaries.

Boungirno Italia which is now being made ready for release is in memory of all those 'searchers', the living, the dead and those who are yet to die.

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