Remembering Sumitra Peries And Her Enduring Contribution To Women’s Filmmaking In South Asia

Satyajit Ray once reportedly called Lester James Peries, the Sri Lankan film director who passed away at the age of 99 in April 2018, his “only relation east of Suez”. Lester’s wife Sumitra, who was his closest colleague, and who passed away on January 19 at the age of 87 had her first encounter with Ray in Mexico in 1963.

By that point, Sumitra had returned from her studies in England and earned a reputation as an assistant director and editor. She recalled that Ray had been “kind and courteous” but a little disdainful of her profession. When she told him of what she did, the Indian director had been somewhat unimpressed, comparing her work to that of a cutter. Temperamentally candid, Sumitra had fired back, “Well, I’m glad I’m not just a cutter!”

Sumitra did not remain a cutter for long. After working on her husband’s films, she made her directorial debut in 1978 with Gehenu Lamayi (Girls). The film established the themes that would preoccupy her for the rest of her career: the rift between rich and poor, the torments of adolescent love, and most significantly the agony of being a woman in Sri Lanka and in South Asia. Her work thus clearly stands out in the pantheon of regional cinema in ways that critics have so far not done justice to.

Sri Lanka has long been orientalised for its sandy beaches and its cultural sites. In the first half of the 20th century, the colonial government helped establish a local cinema in the capital Colombo. The first Sri Lankan film, Kadawunu Poronduwa (Broken Promise), came out in 1947, a year before the country obtained its independence.

From its inception, however, local films were derided as derivative, because they were shot abroad and were felt to be too artificial, contrived, and unauthentic.

Seeking a better and more grounded cinema, a group of Westernised, urban middle-class artistes moved into this void. The most prominent of them was Lester James Peries, who had worked for some time at the official propaganda arm of the Sri Lankan government, the Government Film Unit (GFU), and who had imbibed the aesthetics of Italian neo-realism and the British documentary. Peries’s first film, Rekava (1956), came out around the same time that Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali did in India. Local critics were lukewarm in their response. But the film went on to place Sri Lanka on the world’s cinematic map.

Sumitra Peries subsequently established herself in this circle, but she came from a very different background. Born Sumitra Gunawardena on 24 March 1935, she hailed from a family of affluent arrack distillers on her mother’s side and a family of radical, socialist, and anti-imperialist activists on her father’s. Her two paternal uncles, Philip and Robert, had been actively involved in the struggle against British colonialism: a far cry from the middle-class, Westernised, and Anglicised milieu of her husband.

Born in the southwestern village of Payagala, Sumitra was raised in Avissawella, located roughly 30 miles from Colombo. Initially, she was educated at the local school St Mary’s College, where she mingled with her social peers as well as more deprived sections of her village. Though not part of an urban elite, her mother, Harriet Wickramasinghe, moved around in important circles, “playing tennis with her sari on”. In contrast to her two uncles, her father Henry adjusted to her life, “practising as a proctor”.

Sumitra’s earliest influence was her mother. Through a distillery that her own mother, or Sumitra’s grandmother, had set up, “she took responsibility for the family”. Sumitra’s father, on the other hand, “sought and went after less practical pursuits”.

Their social status did not limit their daughter’s social interactions. “We lived in the most basic of settings,” she remembered. “No electricity, no proper running water, certainly no attached bathrooms. Only through a small radio did we get to know of what was happening in the outside world. As such I would get out and meet other people, including the sons and daughters of estate workers. I revelled in these encounters.”

Colombo lay a world away from all this. When Sumitra turned 13, a month after Sri Lanka gained independence from Great Britain, her family decided to send her there to study. Her new home was to be at Gower Street in Colombo. It was conveniently located right next to her new school, Visakha Vidyalaya, the island’s leading Buddhist girls’ school. “I took time to adjust to my new setting, but eventually got used to life in Colombo.”

Among her siblings, Sumitra was closest to her elder brother, Gamini or “Kuru”. When their mother died two years after the shift to Colombo, he entered a long period of depression. “My brother was a very temperamental man. He left everything to us and left the country. We did not know where he was, or whether he planned to return.”

A few years later, he got in touch with Sumitra: he was in Malta, and he wanted her to join him. Though she was engaged with her higher studies, she heeded his call. She packed her belongings and soon boarded a P&O Liner. “I was not quite 21.”

At Malta, Sumitra joined her brother and a bohemian coterie of friends. Together they sailed across the Mediterranean, dropping anchor in the French Riviera. At Saint-Tropez near the Riviera, Sumitra spotted Brigitte Bardot and Roger Vadim filming And God Created Woman (1956). It was the first time she had seen a film being made.

By then she was at a loss: “I badly wanted to be a psychiatrist. My brother felt it would be best if I went to Switzerland to study at the Jung Institute.”

Just as Sumitra was about to embark on her higher education, however, Gamini decided to return to Sri Lanka. “This led to a series of misadventures that ended in Paris. There I had a vague desire to settle in the Left Bank.” Fate, however, had other plans for her.

Sri Lanka had just established a Legation in Paris. The country’s Envoy, Vernon Mendis, got in touch with Sumitra and boarded her at his official residence. It was here at the Legation that she met Lester James Peries. “He told me to go to England and study film. He felt I was wasting my talents in Paris. Since I had nothing to lose, I heeded his advice.”

Sumitra enrolled at the London School of Film Technique (LSFT) in Brixton. “I was the sole female in a class of white and middle-class males.”

The person she grew closest to in these years was the filmmaker Lindsay Anderson, who taught her class. Lindsay had already met Lester a few years before. Needless to say, he and Sumitra became very good friends. Their association grew so strong that in her later visits to England, “we would meet, and he would cook for me”.

Sumitra successfully completed her studies. But finding a job was challenging. “Those days, if you weren’t a member of a union, it was not easy to enter the industry.”

Armed with her qualification, she knocked on the doors of Elizabeth Mai-Harris, one of Britain’s leading subtitling firms. “I passionately argued my case. Fortunately, they believed in me and took me in. My fluency in French may have helped.”

Sometime later, though, she encountered another problem: “I started growing homesick.” Her elder brother ordered her to return. She thus came back home.

Sumitra then found work as an assistant to Lester Peries, onboard his film Sandesaya (The Message, 1960). “I was the sole female crew member. We were shooting a world away from Colombo. A tough ordeal for any woman, but I grew to enjoy it.” 

She also grew close to Lester. Four years later, in 1964, she married him.

Making full use of her editing skills, Sumitra wound up as her husband’s closest aide. She worked on all his films in the 1960s: Gamperaliya (1963), Delovak Athara (1966), Ran Salu (1967), Golu Hadawatha (1968), and Akkara Paha (1969).

These films won awards and accolades abroad: Gamperaliya secured the Golden Peacock or the Best Film Award at the 3rd Indian International Film Festival and the Golden Head of Palenque at the Mexico Film Festival, while Ran Salu won the Gandhi Award at New Delhi and was telecast to a positive reception on Raidió Teilifís Éireann in Ireland.

Recalling her years as an editor, she once told me, “What fascinated me during these years was the mise-en-scène. To achieve the right cut is harder than you think. You need to train your eyes and you need to make the decision then and there.” Contrary to what Satyajit Ray may have felt, then, her job was hardly that of a mere cutter.

After a stint in France and a few idle years, Sumitra carved her path as director with Gehenu Lamayi in 1978. Based on a popular novel, it became an instant success wherever it went: the British press in particular loved it, with David Robinson of The Times lauding it for its “holistic feminine sensibility.” Its success emboldened her to make nine more feature films: Ganga Addara (By the Bank of the River, 1980), Yahalu Yeheli (Friends, 1982), Maya (1984), Sagara Jalaya Madi Handuwa Oba Sanda (A Letter Written in the Sand, 1988), Loku Duwa (The Eldest Daughter, 1994), Duwata Mawaka Misa (Mother Alone, 1997), Sakman Maluwa (The Garden, 2003), Yahaluwo (Friends, 2007) and Vaishnavee (The Goddess, 2018). Except for Yahaluwo, they all centre on young female protagonists.

Apart from her work in film, Sumitra also worked in television, having gained six months’ work experience at the French Radio and Television Institute (ORTF) in Paris in 1971. She served as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to France and Spain from 1995 to 1998, and did her part to secure international goodwill for the country at a time of rising ethnic tensions and separatist conflict.

With Yahaluwo and Vaishnavee behind her, she was toying with several ideas, as late as 2022, for her next venture. Humble to a fault, she remained open to outsiders, in particular young, aspiring directors who would constantly seek her advice.

Sumitra’s passing, given all this, signifies an end and a passing of an era. Linked through her husband to some of the most exciting strides in the arts of post-Independence Sri Lanka, she nevertheless carved her own path. Indeed, as Vilasnee Tampoe-Hautin rightly argues in her biography, Sumitra Peries: Sri Lankan Filmmaker, while she is considered a mere appendage to her husband’s work, her career was distinct on its own right.

Moreover, unlike South Asian women filmmakers from her time, including Fatma Begum, Parveen Rizvi, Shamin Ara, and Kohinoor Akhter, Sumitra did not come to the director’s chair as an actress. In that sense, with her education in the West, and her editing skills, she was a definitive precursor to the likes of Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta. This point has not yet been appreciated or acknowledged by historians of the regional cinema.

A product of a rural upper middle-class, Sumitra Peries remained intimately attached to her people, in particular women. Her films, which dwell considerably on their agonies and their torments, are in that sense an enduring testament, not just to her craft, but also to a bygone era in filmmaking – both in Sri Lanka and in South Asia.

(Uditha Devapriya is a freelance columnist based in Sri Lanka who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com. He is the Chief International Relations Analyst at Factum, an Asia-Pacific focused foreign policy think-tank accessible via www.factum.lk.)