An Exclusive interview with Sinhala Cinema’s Golden Couple

A Video interview with Dr.Lester James Peries and Mrs.Sumithra Peries conducted by Ramesh Uvais which captures insights about the launch of their newest foundation.

Lester willing to make comeback with Tamil movie

By Ramesh Uvais

Globally renowned filmmaker Dr. Lester James Peries said he was sorry that he had not made a Tamil movie in his illustrious career, but said despite the physical strain involved in filmmaking he might consider an offer to make one.

In a video interview with Reel Life, Dr. Peries said he preferred to call our cinema ‘the Sri Lankan cinema industry’ rather than the ‘Sinhala cinema industry’ because our cinema comprises movie creations in Sinhala, Tamil and English. Dr. Peries announced that he was retiring from movies after his last movie ‘Ammawarune’. When you decided to say goodbye to filmmaking after Ammawarune, surely you knew there was more potential in you to make movies. Did you retire hurt? “Not really, but I must say that filmmaking is no easy task. David Lean once said film making is so tough, and it’s more difficult than going down the coal mine,” said the 92-year-old fimmaker.

His celebrity wife Ms. Peries said she was now writing a film script with veteran Tony Ranasinghe  and hoped to start work on it by this year if they found a producer. Touching upon the present scene, she said it was heartening to note that Mahindagamanaya and King Hunther – which are being shown now were doing extremely well, indicating the fact that filmgoers would always respond well to films if they catered to masses.