Best Actor Award Goes to Jagath Chamila …

By: Capt. Elmo Jayawardena

The New York Film Festival is over; the best actor award is securely placed in a little hamlet in Moratuwa and everyone has now come to know Jagath Chamila. Great feat and nothing should take away the luminosity he enjoys today as he richly deserves the accolade for the role he played as Sam in Sameege Kathawa. My lines are to praise him and state my humble or ‘not so humble’ opinion on an event that started on the banks of Bolgoda and crept its way to the silver screen in the Big Apple.

I saw the movie more than 6 times, from the first print that Director/Producer Priyankara Vithanachchi made. Let the movie speak for itself. A book and a movie are not easy to compare. Authors have space, and for them it is only a matter of spinning a story by minting words and expressions to arouse the interest of a reader. They have a wide canvas to beautify with colourful descriptions and well-constructed lines to fill their books. Film makers have a much harder task. They struggle in turbid tangles and battle multiple fronts. First with budgets, (do not forget this is Priyankara and not Spielberg.) They have to use so much creativity and do a balancing act in order to come out with the best possible combination to create a winning movie. There too the probabilities linger, to slip on the last step when victory is within reach. Priyankara made Sameege Kathawa with varying winds that blew mostly from negative directions. This was his first real film. How good is it? That you will see and decide for yourself, yes, it is in the eyes of the beholder. I only hope that Sameege Kathawa will hit the cinema halls fast as it is a people’s movie and they now have a national hero to watch.

Jagath won the award and he is a celebrity, a real one amidst the ‘card board Sandos’ we are forced to worship.

(Contd. in the magazine)