{"id":61046,"date":"2018-10-10T02:14:57","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T06:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=61046"},"modified":"2018-10-10T02:14:57","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T06:14:57","slug":"demons-in-paradise-was-not-screened-in-jaffna-because-organizers-felt-it-may-place-the-whole-international-cinema-festival-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=61046","title":{"rendered":"“Demons in Paradise” Was Not Screened in Jaffna Because Organizers Felt It May Place The Whole International Cinema Festival at Risk."},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/p>\n

Dharisha Bastians<\/strong><\/p>\n

When organisers of the Jaffna International Cinema Festival cancelled a scheduled screening of his documentary film Demons in Paradise from the festival programme last week, Tamil filmmaker Jude Ratnam claimed he was not surprised.<\/p>\n

Demons in Paradise debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. The film has been screened many times in Sri Lanka since \u2013 but always in the island\u2019s south. On October 5, a screening was scheduled at the Majestic Cineplex in the heart of Jaffna town, marking the first time it would be publicly screened for a predominantly Tamil-speaking audience in the formerly embattled Northern Province.<\/p>\n

Ratnam said the organisers only told him that they had been compelled to pull the film from the festival line up due to \u201cpressure from the community\u201d but they declined to name specific individuals or groups who had raised objections. \u201cInitially they did not inform me. I noticed that the film was no longer in the programme put up online,\u201d he told Sunday Observer in a telephone interview last week.<\/p>\n

Festival organisers told Sunday Observer unofficially that they were worried that going ahead with the screening of Demons in Paradise might put the whole festival at risk, since the north was still an \u201cemotive place.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Issuing a media statement last Wednesday, in response to Ratnam\u2019s public letter, Festival Organiser Anoma Rajakaruna said the filmmaker\u2019s statement that he had not been given a proper explanation for the removal of Demons in Paradise from the schedule was inaccurate. Organisers chose to keep the film slot empty, hoping to use it to hold a forum and public discussion on freedom of expression instead. Jude Ratnam\u2019s decision to walk out of these negotiations and release a statement to the media had \u2018closed that space\u2019, an organiser told Sunday Observer.<\/p>\n

In her media statement, Rajakaruna said the organizers had hoped that the discussion may have opened up a space not only for the screening of Ratnam\u2019s film, but for other films by other filmmakers as well, in \u201ca nation divided by identity politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Ratnam says he did not see the point of being at a discussion symbolically, when his film \u2013 which he says is really meant to be watched by a Tamil audience \u2013 could not be screened.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe the organisers didn\u2019t expect this reaction when they scheduled Demons in Paradise. But in part they have a responsibility to take a stand, when there is a threat to freedom of expression,\u201d the filmmaker argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cJaffna Cinema Festival should screen the film,\u201d said Kannan Arunasalam, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker himself on Twitter after the film was pulled from the schedule. \u201cOtherwise history will not be kind on the festival organizers,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n

Local media watchdog, the Free Media Movement also weighed in on the issue. Human Rights Activist Ruki Fernando said the organisers must explain to the public, and not just to Ratnam, why Demons in Paradise was removed from the programme. \u201cThey should expose, instead of protecting those who threatened sabotage, disruptions of the festival \u2013 wrong to remove the film, whether it was a majority or minority wish,\u201d Fernando said on Twitter last week. Film-maker Malaka Devapriya pulled his own film Bahuchithawadiya from the festival in protest against the removal of Demons in Paradise from the program.<\/p>\n

The sequence of events has sparked fears about growing intolerance for divergent and introspective narratives of the Tamil struggle in Jaffna.<\/p>\n

In June 2014, the administration of the Jaffna University refused to permit commemorative events honouring Dr Rajini Thiranagama on the 25th anniversary of her death within the university premises. Dr Thiranagama, an academic, medical doctor and author, was assassinated near her home in Jaffna in 1989. Rajini was a founding member of the University Teachers for Human Rights \u2013 Jaffna (UTHR-J) which catalogued atrocities committed by all parties to the conflict \u2013 Government troops, the IPKF and the LTTE. Initially sympathetic to the Tamil militancy, Rajini Thiranagama quickly became one of the LTTE\u2019s fiercest critics when the Tigers began to commit unspeakable crimes in the name of the Tamil independence struggle. In the Tiger ethos, no one was a greater traitor than the Tamil who raised a voice against the brutal turn the freedom struggle had taken. With the Jaffna University increasingly becoming a hotbed of Tamil nationalist activity it seemed that the celebration of Rajini Thiranagama\u2019s life was no longer welcome on the premises, even though she had headed a department at the Medical Faculty of the same university 25 years before.<\/p>\n

When Ratnam decided to make the film, he said he had also steeled himself to face being labelled as traitor within the Tamil community. The second half of his documentary deals extensively with militancy within the Tamil community that manifested in the birth of several armed groups that eventually turned on and devoured each other. The lived experience of Ratnam\u2019s characters in the film is a powerful critique of the lingering fractures and divides within a community that was devastated; both by the wars within and the battle against Sri Lankan armed forces.<\/p>\n

Ratnam earned the ire of Tamil nationalists when he famously claimed in a BBC interview that he wanted \u201cmy side to lose the war.\u201d \u201cWhen the war was coming to an end, I wanted the [Tamil] Tigers to lose the fight. I wanted it to end, even if my own people had to be killed,\u201d the Tamil filmmaker told the BBC. His critics tore down the remarks, saying they amounted to justifying thousands killed in the final phase of the conflict between Government troops and the LTTE.<\/p>\n

But the filmmaker stands by his remarks, saying the independence struggle fell apart when Tamils started killing each other. \u201cWhen violence turned on the Tamils themselves, the struggle reached a cancerous point,\u201d Ratnam said, \u201cand I have the right to make that statement within the work of art.\u201d To Ratnam, in a way the reaction to the prospect of Demons in Paradise being screened in Jaffna is a validation of the critiques within the film itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the way the Tamil community reacts \u2013 this is the political culture within the community that is now getting exposed.\u201d <\/p>\n

Courtesy:Sunday Observer<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Dharisha Bastians When organisers of the Jaffna International Cinema Festival cancelled a scheduled screening of his documentary film Demons in Paradise from the festival programme last week, Tamil filmmaker Jude Ratnam claimed he was not surprised. Demons in Paradise debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. The film has been screened many times …<\/p>\n

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