Kala Korner by Dee Cee
The early days of cinema
The doyen of Sri Lankan cinema, Lester James Pieris in his fifty years
of film-making has twenty films to his credit. "As a friend of mine pointed
out the other day, if you calculate at the rate of a film a year, I have
been unemployed for thirty years," Lester said, addressing a full house
at the Indian Cultural Centre recently.
In a light-hearted speech, Lester reminisced about the early days of
his career. He had heaps of interesting anecdotes starting from the days
of the Government Film Unit (GFU). When Lester was in London in the early
1950s, Ralph Keene who was coming over to the GFU persuaded Lester, along
with that brilliant documentary filmmaker Pragnasoma Hettiarachchi (whose
sad death three months ago in New York we heard of only the other day)
and Irwin Dissanayake to join him. The two of them agreed to come over
but Lester hesitated and Keene kept on writing to him from Colombo until
he made the decision to come. "I don't regret it," Lester confessed.
Amidst so many odds
Lester went on to tell us how 'Rekava' was made. Outdoor locations and
sound being recorded on the spot was something unheard of in Sinhala cinema.
"Sinhala cinema had a false start. Forty-two films had been made by the
time we started 'Rekava' but they were neither films nor truly Sri Lankan,"
Lester said. There was no improvement in the quality. The little diversion
was by copying popular Hindi and Tamil films.
Bandarawela was selected as the prime location to begin work on 'Rekava'.
"We examined the weather patterns over many years and the statistics indicated
that our timing was perfect. The weather would be fine. Once we got there
it was a different story. For 20 days it just poured and all our schedules
went for a six," Lester recalled. And then they realized they had to give
half a bottle of arrack to the monkey, the stilt walker's companion, every
day! The monkey and its master, were picked up every morning by the production
manager, Premnath Moraes, a popular personality in the local film world.
Moraes would come in his Bug Fiat station wagon which was used as a toilet
by the monkey like a prayer! (It would have been sweet memories for Sesha
Palihakkara, the stilt walker who was in the audience).
Things came to a head when a chicken pox epidemic made them stop work
for two months pushing back the entire schedule. Recording outdoors had
its own problems. Keeping crows away was one of the major hazards. At the
end of it all, the film was a box office flop. "The result was that I had
no work for four years," Lester confessed.
Yet so primitive
On a more serious note, Lester said that cinema should either be an industry,
a business or an art. After over half a century, Sinhala cinema is neither
an industry, a business or an art. He also lamented that it was never clear
which ministry handled the subject of cinema. "It's like a football - being
kicked about the whole time."
Touching on some of the vast strides made by world cinema, he stressed
that we are at least 30 years behind the times. "Technology is so primitive.
In this age of digital sound, we are still in the mono stage."
He jazzed along with fiery energy
On October 20, a celebrated jazz piano soloist, Cornelius Claudio Kreusch
took a crowded house at the Lionel Wendt by storm with his artistry.
Presented by the Goethe Institut (The German Cultural Institute) the
classically trained pianist, composer and producer led the audience on
an unexpected and exacting jazz musical journey. There was no interval
and there were no explanatory programmes. The delightful entertainment
was well paced.
A Bachelor's Degree in Music from the Berklee College of Music in Boston
and a Master's from the Manhattan School of Music have not deterred this
winner of many awards from turning to jazz. He "approaches music as an
intuitive traveller seeking its ultimate source," he says.
Clad casually, a smile on his face he walks across the stage to the
microphone with a camaraderie that gets instantly to the audience. He introduces
himself and his music briefly, and sits down at the piano, on which his
long slender fingers move like live things. He has studied with the legendary
jazz personality Jaki Byard.
Unbound and unfettered by strictly structured music, his language of
Jazz changes from concert to concert.
He lives up to his credo, the freedom to improvise, to seize the moment
of inspiration, as one does in writing a poem. That moment is crucial to
creativity. He turns his thoughts, emotions and feelings into a living
music. He says he is especially inspired by people who share their individuality
within a collective spirit.
Among the items he played was the dreamy Body and Soul. It received
the Kreusch treatment in cascades of music, with his own improvised magic
streaming through sunlight and storm as he presented it in a style that
was entirely his.
There were bursts of energy, and time to savour delight in how he handled
a Dizzy Gillespie standard using his alchemy to make it startlingly new
and his own.
Claudio Kreusch is a great entertainer. After each item there was tumultuous
applause. He came in on the crest of one of them with a paper bag of ping-pong
balls which he placed against the strings inside the piano. This was a
fun item.
As he jazzed along with fiery energy and runs and trills on the keyboard,
there was a pinging and a ponging that created a sound rich and strange-
pure invention. Improvisation, freedom, individuality, the urge to experiment
and explore what is new and yet within reach, rewards this pianist with
a release of feeling, a magical legacy, born of the past and the present.
At times he creates an orchestral sound.
Kreusch is a firm believer in letting go of pre-conceived ideas. "This
means to let go of the 'I', to accept change and basically, death as part
of life."
Kreusch is interested in reaching all tribes with his music. He feels
that for this purpose he needs to preserve spiritual depth, mental flexibility
and physical health. He adds to these - "Endless creativity, and an inquiring
mind that will always look for and find the unexpected and unusual."
He came back to freedom - the guiding star of the creative artist, especially
the jazz musician. He started jazz when he was ten years old and it is
now his musical occupation. "Maybe because of my anti-authoritarian upbringing."
He lives in an apartment in New York and was a very close eye-witness
to the September 11 American tragedy. His composition on this horrendous
incident was played that night to a hushed audience.
It was a moving piece of music which brought out the impact of the burning
towers, of death and mourning.
If one fancied that he heard the sound of funeral drums and burial bells,
that was not all there was to it.
"It was a kind of wake-up call to the world," Kreusch says, "It jolted
a slumbering' world to reality. It generated a vast fund of love, neighbourliness
and caring among people and countries. And that led to hope." He called
this piece When Night Falls.
As a finale to the concert Claridio Kreusch brought in audience participation
as an accompaniment to his jazz and a final act of rapport and appreciation.
Kreusch hopes to return to Sri Lanka soon.
Alfreda de Silva |
