Multi awarded filmmaker Thivanka focuses on the wild
Lankagama, an isolated village bordering the Sinharaja Forest Reserve recently became a controversy with the construction of a road connecting the town of Neluwa. Environmentalist, wildlife activists and nature lovers alleged that the construction of the road would affect the Sinharaja forest, one of UNCESCO’s world heritage sites.
The village of Lankagama is also home to one of the latest discoveries of Sri Lanka’s wonderful wildlife species, endemic white monkeys. With the road construction, wildlife activists are worried what would be the future of these rarest apes, Purple faced Leaf Monkeys. Featuring the beauty and innocence of this troupe of ‘shy’ creatures, Aegle Creations, one of the pioneering wildlife documentary team released a documentary in its youtube channel recently. This is the first time that the rare white monkeys in Sri Lanka had been featured in the audio-visual medium.
“In 2011 Galle’s Wild Life Conservation Society researchers, following an information from the villagers, found a troupe of white monkeys in the forest reserve,” says Thivanka Rukshan Perera, CEO of Aegle Creations who joined Wild Life Conservation Society Galle President Madura de Silva and his team to do the video.
Initially the group found Purple Faced Leaf Monkeys but later it was discovered that there were snowy white monkeys as well. “It was not due to albino condition but due to leucism”, Thivanka said quoting the expert Madura de Silva. The documentary team of Thivanka and Madura’s environmental team last month went to Sinharaja to film the white monkeys.
According to Mr. Silva first recorded report of white monkeys in Sri Lanka goes back to the year 682 where Robert Knox had written about a milk white ‘Waduros’ or monkeys.
“At present deforestation and lack of forest cover are major threats for these endemic animals. They need forest cover as they are shy compared to other monkeys,” says Madura de Siva.
Thivanka a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) graduate from Academy of Art in San Francisco (2011 to 2016), where he majored in writing for film and television, started script writing and making documentaries as soon as he returned to Sri Lanka in 2016.
From his younger days Thivanka’s heart was with literature and writing and he has already published two poetry books.
“I was interested in screenplay writing but there was no film school to learn it,” says Thivanka. However determined to study what he liked most Thivanka after education at St Joseph’s College in Colombo, enrolled in a foundation in Malaysia in 2010. From there he went to the US.
Having returned to Sri Lanka Thivanka wrote and directed several short natural history documentaries including – “Brown Wood Owl – Juvenile’s Journey”, “Serendip Scops Owl” or ‘Panduwan Bassa’ discovered by Deepal Warakagoda in 2001, “The Devil Bird or Ulama of Sri Lanka” in 2014 and “Voice of the Night” in 2017. His first wildlife sort documentary short, “Brown Wood Owl – Juvenile’s Journey”, was screened at 20 international film festivals, including the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival in New York in 2014.
His documentary on leopards tittled ‘Realm of the Leopards” was featured at Discovery channel. “We had done two documentaries and one was picked by the Discovery through the British distributor- Earth Touch and it was featured at National Geography also,” Thivanka said.
His cameramen and other crew include Dhnushka Bandara, Saman Hewage and Manjula P Gajanayake.
Most of the wildlife documentaries of Aegle Creations, uploaded to youtube have been going on viral creating much interest and enthusiasm among Sri Lankans and foreigners world over.
Thivanka whose heart was to write, did a screenplay for the short film ‘Silent Letter’ and it won the Best Short Film (debut) award at the Whatashort Independent International Film Festival held in New Delhi, India. This was out of more than 400 entries from 34 countries. The story narrating around a low caste young lad who tries to escape into the city life and meets devastating consequences was directed by award winning actor Kamal Addararachchi. The screenplay was also won certificate of excellence at the Fifth Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival at Mumbai in India.
Some of his other screenplays had been nominated for internationally renowned competitions like the ‘Michael Collyer Memorial Fellowship in Screenwriting’, where his spec ‘Bird of Prey’ reached the finals making it to the top three in 2016. ‘Black Leopard’ was included in the ‘Hot 100’ list of screenplays compiled by the ‘Capital Fund Screenplay Competition’ in 2017. His screenplays have also been recognized by competitions such as Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Zoetrope Screenwriting Contest’, ‘Script Pipeline’ and ‘The World Series of Screenwriting’.
Thivanka’s next plan is to realise his dream, to write and direct a feature film.