On Sunday, 19 October 2014 the Sri Lanka Archive of Contemporary Art, Architecture & Design screened, for the first time in Jaffna, three short films by Kannan Arunasalam. Kerosene, Koothu and Paper were produced for Groundviews in 2011 as part of the Moving Images project.
The Sri Lanka Archive of Contemporary Art, Architecture & Design is a flagship project of Raking Leaves, a non-profit organisation that commissions and publishes contemporary art projects. Kannan Arunasalam was born in Jaffna and grew up in London. He returned to Sri Lanka in 2005 and moved to Cambodia in 2013. In 2013, he was awarded best documentary short for Kerosene at the Seattle South Asian International Documentary Festival. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The New Yorker, the BBC and Al Jazeera English.
This Q&A is based on a request by the Editor of Groundviews to capture key questions from the audience after the screening of the trilogy, so that Kannan’s responses could be placed in the public domain as a foundation for further debate and discussion.
All three films are embedded below. More details here.
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Can you tell us about your approach to narration? Because we feel more than the moving camera the series of still shorts push the story further.
I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules. If you are telling a story that is unfolding in front of you, going hand held may be better, rather than the rigidity of a camera on a tripod. Sometimes you need to shoot on an iPhone, which I have done. I think you need to choose the style and approach, both narratively and visually, that will best suit the story you are trying to tell. The resilience trilogy are portraits, rather than documentaries, and for those I felt the the fixed camera perhaps worked better.
How do you identify yourself? A photographer or filmmaker. How do you define photography?
I’ve used photography, sound, and film in my work. Sometimes together, sometimes on their own. I use whatever can help me to tell the story in the most compelling way. Sometimes a stills camera works best. Other times, sound alone. It depends.
I try not get bogged down with definitions. I feel they tend to restrict you, creatively. I’m sure people have defined what photography is, and there are many facets to its meaning, both artistically and technically, but I don’t personally feel that defining terms help me in what I am trying to do, which is to tell the story.
How do you go about choosing your topic of each film because some of the issues are not even known to the locals and you are living abroad. How do you make films on Sri Lanka sitting outside Sri Lanka?
I was born in Jaffna so there was always a connection. I’ve had an ambiguous relationship with my hometown. I moved back to Sri Lanka and was living there for 8 years up until a year ago. While I still feel like an outsider, the relationships I built over the years helped me to discover stories and characters, and their nuances. These slowly opened up to me.
My long term engagement with elders in Jaffna and around the country through the http://iam.lk project has been a rich source of stories for my films over the years.
For whom were these films are made?
The Kerosene, Koothu, Paper trilogy was a tribute to Jaffna, my hometown, and to the resilience of the people who lived through war. I hope they have universal appeal but the films were made primarily for the people of Jaffna. That was my key audience.
One of the striking things for me is the rhythm and humour of the language used by people like Esan in the films, so particular to the Tamil used in Jaffna. A lot of that is lost in translation. It’s always wonderful to observe a Jaffna audience watching my films, seeing them pick up on those nuances. One of my favourite screenings was the impromptu one I did at garage of the mechanics that pioneered the kerosene-run engines.
I regret missing the screening at the Sri Lanka Archive in Jaffna.
Your craft is more professional in its outlook, Have you undergone any formal training in photography or filmmaking? Why and how you became a filmmaker? Can we call your work as ethnographical in its approach?
When I started, I picked up a camera and started shooting. Kerosene, Koothu and Paper were made like that. I worked in radio and that helped me to craft stories. But a lot of it was trial and error. I’m still experimenting. And of course watching a lot of films, absorbing what is available to everyone. Filmmakers are incredibly generous with their knowledge and there are plenty of resources, especially online, if you look. Also, the Canon 5D Mk 2 was a revolutionary camera. Suddenly filmmaking was accessible and you could make movies that had this gorgeous look. While it has its limitations, I will always cherish that camera.
I don’t feel my films are ethnographical. They are meant, first and foremost, to entertain.
In Paper, there are shots where the human figures are shown headless. Is that intentional? In Kerosene, why didn’t you show the home made jam bottle lamp that became the symbol of how we were made to live?
The elderly security guard in Paper didn’t want to be too identifiable. So we discussed what he would be comfortable with and I experimented with different ways to do that. I’m not sure if it entirely worked in terms of its aims but visually it was interesting.
I get asked this question a lot. I knew about the wonderful jam bottle lamp and spoke to many people about it. I even put one together from scratch with the help of a gentleman who lived through that time. Instead of Koothu, I explored making the third film on the impact of restrictions on children’s education and the jam bottle lamp would no doubt have featured in that. That said, I wanted to tell stories that people didn’t already know about too well. As a filmmaker you make certain choices and I wanted to make ‘kerosene’ the symbol of scarcity for that time.
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