Sumitra Peries a juror at EarthVision Film Festival in Tokyo

1 March 2001

Sri Lanka's leading woman film maker Mrs Sumitra Peries has been invited to serve as a juror at EarthVision, the Tokyo Global Environmental Film Festival, held in the Japanese capital from March 1 to 3, 2001.

She joined a panel of eminent media professionals to select the best environmental and wildlife films made in Asia and Oceania during 1999-2000. The jury was chaired by Tadao Sato, a Japanese film expert who is an authority on the Asian cinema.

This is the second time that a Sri Lankan has been invited to be on the festival jury. In 1993, science writer and journalist Nalaka Gunawardene served as a juror.

EarthVision, started in 1992, has emerged as the leading environmental film festival in the Asia Pacific region. Now in its nineth year, the festival accepts feature films, television programmes, videos, dramas, documentaries and animated films related to any aspect of the global environment.

The festival's aim is to 'examine through moving images what makes an ideal and harmonious relationship with and among lives on earth'. It is organised annually by the EarthVision Orgnisation, with the support of a large number of film and television organisations and corporate sponors. In Sri Lanka, the festival is represented by the Sri Lanka Environmental Television Project (SLETP), which has been encouraging Sri Lankan film-makers to enter the competition.

Mrs Peries is the first and only professionally qualified woman film maker in Sri Lanka. Trained at the London School of Film Technique and later in France, she has been associated with the Sinhala cinema since 1959, first as an assistant director and editor, and then as a director on her own. In her films, she has focused on the condition of the Sri Lankan woman and the different and subtle ways in which society exploits and subjugates the woman.

Mrs Peries has been a delegate to numerous Film Festivals and served as a jury member for the Young Asian Cinema Festival in Tokyo in 1992. She has also had joint retrospectives of her films with her husband, Dr Lester James Peries, at the "La Cinematheque Francaise" in 1988, and another organised by the Asia Society of New York the same year. Her films have won over two dozen national awards including Best Director, and she was also awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the President of Sri Lanka in October 2000. She was Sri Lankan Ambassador to France, Spain and UNESCO from 1995 to 1999.

Information on EarthVision film festival can be obtained from the SLETP.