‘Mille Soya’: Depiction of the Euro-centric Fantasy of the Youths in the Economic Crisis in the Underdeveloped Sri Lanka.
Mahesh Hapugoda and Hiniduma Sunil Senevi
Abstract
The economic crisis and the subsequent socio-political as well as cultural outcomes in the post-independent Sri Lanka and the youths who are helplessly caught in its whirl have been depicted in various contemporary literatures and art works with different point of views. It is true that, over the last twenty years or so, Sri Lankans came across several films which concentrated on this issue, but the movie Mille Soya becomes a significant masterpiece, since it successfully portrays the said issue with a degree of hyper-real and trans-territorialistic point of view in the context of economic, social and cultural globalization in which Sri Lanka has become an unquestioning partner after 1978. The film’s content and the style are trans-geographic, because the above economic issue itself is trans-nationalistic in its nature. In other words, the perspective which has been used in this movie is Euro-centric as are the subjects who are portrayed in it. In this trans-territorial, globalized world, every phenomenon goes beyond its national boundaries, as does in Mille Soya. As the developing nations do not have wealth to achieve prosperity and independence, all that is left for them is to dream or to fantasize of those utopian lands where there is prosperity. In this movie, the socio-economic conditions that helped to form the Euro-centric fantasy has effectively been portrayed and, in addition, how the human subjects become victimized in pursuit of that ‘dream’ has also been shown in a realistic way. With the above facts, we attempt to contextualize the above movie in the economic under-development in Sri Lanka, and discover the essential historical and economic conditions and realities which lead to a formation of a Euro-centric fantasy. How this film goes beyond the aesthetic periphery to transcendent higher political objectives in the formation of the umbilical Euro-centric fantasy will also be aimed extendedly.
Key words: Euro-centric utopia, Fantasy, Economic under-development, Global art
Methodology:
Some historical, economic and socio-political overviews in Sri Lanka will be elaborated to contextualize the phenomenological and epistemological backgrounds in relation to the movie. As certain events have widely been discussed in various other contexts, we do not intend to illuminate them extendedly but structural contextualizations will be detailed in order to fit the movie into the theory. In that case, the under-development, poverty and human migration in the post open market Sri Lanka will be analyzed to support our hypothesis. Certain aesthetical, economical and psychoanalytical discourses will be articulated on comparative and contrastive basis to explain the theoretical nature of this discussion. In all aspects, the analytical methodology will suitably be used to explore the phenomenological nature of the contexts. The discussion will consist of two parts. Part I will elaborate the historical and theoretical backgrounds which, we feel, essential for an in depth dialogue without which a proper analytical and discursive understanding of the Sri Lankan context in relation to the movies is possible. In Part II, the background given in the first part is pragmatically and structurally re-articulated with the content of the movie.
Part I- The Historical and Theoretical Re-contextualization
Introduction:
Sri Lanka had been a semi-feudal country and was evolving as a feudalistic subsistent agricultural economy, before it was eventually taken over as a crown colon by the British in 1796. Then the situation changed in certain segments, when the country’s economy was converted into a plantation oriented, industrial agricultural one. Unlike the economic transformation in some of the Western contexts where feudalism was totally uprooted to give way to industrial based liberal capitalism, Sri Lanka was experiencing, like many other colonized nations, an entirely different phenomenon. In the plantation sector and related export oriented segments, the economic functions were fairly industrialized and the human relationships were becoming subsequently modernized to an extent in which relationships of production determined how men related themselves to the process of production. But, in other parts, the economy remained either feudalistic or, sometimes, even pre-feudalistic. Hence, the human relationships sphere was extremely complex and dualistic by nature. The situation remained this way even after the domineering state through independence until the fatalistic introduction of the open market economy in 1978.
Sri Lanka was completely exposed to the consumer mode of global capitalism or, in other words, socio-culturally speaking, to the post-industrial capitalism or, specifically, to the ruthless arrival of techno- capitalistic postmodernism. This phenomenon was perhaps, the most important economic and socio-cultural ‘paradigm shift’ that Sri Lanka ever experienced. The centuries old feudalistic story of Sri Lanka changed forever, though it kept on coming back as nostalgic ‘empty signifiers’ later on. It changed the very foundations of the Sri Lankan society to a far greater extent that the remorseless colonization which lasted to centuries could never even imagine. However, as we all know, capitalism has its own limitations. It can enrich the richer further and make poor the poorer. The colonial introduction of commercial capitalism functioned in the state sector as well as in Colombo which was considered as the centre of exchange; hence, the peripheries in Sri Lanka either remained attached to the former semi-feudalistic contexts while the centers experienced the function of the commercial capital. The structural changes in 1978 facilitated the entrance of global consumer capital and the people who were exposed to this were magically fascinated and spell bound by dreams that came alongside. The youths in the country’s peripheries were struggling to come to term with the plague of fantasies created by globalized form of consumer capitalism, since there is essentially a gap between reaching the fantasy and the financial requirement. The dreams kept on filtering to all the globalized nations in a trans- territorial form and no geographical boundaries of the nation state could be applied henceforth. Those fantasies were essentially Euro-centric, because only those who possess capital can become masters over other nations and produce fantasies that can be implanted in the subjects as what they would look like in future.
The achievement of this fantasy world is a tedious endeavor. If the wealth is in the possession of those masters, one has to cross the boarders to get there. If you want to enter that world and be part of them or look like them, as a mandatory condition, you must buy the fetish consumer commodities. The commodities are trans-class and trans-cultural in the assimilation process. With them one can erase the original traditional, regional or class identities which one wants to get rid off. There is a master-slave complex in the formation of the fantasy which is a psychological condition that encompasses the economical limitations. The global image of the master’s fantasy is a prototypical and based on the consumer market. The post-industrial market phenomenon is currently determined by the leading western capitalist countries and the fantasy image that is proliferated worldwide is essentially Euro-centric. Any individual can follow it but what is needed is money.
According to Marx, the developed countries produce an example of themselves to the developing nations what they would look like in future (Marx 1988: 102). Hence, it is not ambiguous as to why the fantasy of the Sri Lankan youth, like that of any other youth in any developing nations, is umbilicly Euro-centric utopia, whatever the nationalistic spirits that are locally over-determined and propagated. Sometimes, one can be psychologically nostalgic about the nationalistic and historical discourses about a ‘de-colonized’ motherland but the economic restrains force you to place your body against the discursive realities. This paradoxical situation has been portrayed in non other than any masterpiece of our times, than in the movie Mille Soya by Boodee Keerithisena (1966- ).
Despite the claims by globalization about the nations without boundaries, paradoxically, there is huge economic wall as well as migration laws which block the entry to the ‘paradise’. The periphery or the marginalized countries tend to be further polarized from the centers. This 2003 masterpiece not only microcosms a certain facet of the reality of the Sri Lankan youths in the post- 1978 economic restructuralization and subsequent fantasization of how the Western development pattern and wealth function, as what Sri Lanka could not achieve in the long run; but it also mirrors the dehumanized nature of the capitalistic economy and its mechanism. The movie focuses on a special entity in the country’s west coast. This strange coastal belt of Casablanca, according to the film-marker, never opens up a pathway to the paradise of the Uthopia but, drastically scatters the very fantasy itself that has been unconsciously implanted in those marginalized youths by the charisma of consumer capitalism.
Film Synopsis:
The film revolves around a group of young musicians in a Sri Lankan west coastal village called Maravila who apparently venerate the renowned reggae idol Bob Marley, and wish to become a famous band. But their lives on the lowest rungs of the Sri Lankan society, with its poverty and violence, offer them little or no opportunities at all to follow their dream. It was the time of the relentless suppression of the 1989 youth uprising and the militarization of Sri Lanka after the Tamil separatists’ insurrection in North-east. The society had been terrorized and traumatized both by the rebels as well as by the government military. Friends returning from Italy boasted about money to be made with which those youths were convinced, though not without suspicions, that now there is a way that their dream may come true. Pradeep, the protagonist of the film, and his friends get inspired by the stories of fast acquisition of money and the lavish way they spend it. The dream not only involves to be famous musicians one day but to pursue the dream of wealth. They decided to go to Italy through the improper channel as done by their friends. But their journey was not to be made on a bed of rose, because the process is not legal. The film follows them on their dangerous journey with all its hazards, its comradeships, its tears and laughter; and also death.
Discussion:
Until became colonized by western invaders, Sri Lanka remained a valley agricultural based subsistent economy. It depended on seasonal crop agriculture in which paddy farming provided staple food requirement of the peasant economy and the chena cultivation supplied the additional crop that seasonally shifted its provisions time to time. It did not produce a surplus capital on which, in every society, an advanced culture or a complex form of art is determined. The historical socio-economic evolution in the pre-colonized Sri Lanka indicates that the country did not experience a surplus of production or capital for a formation of an advance class system, except the monarchs in the Anuradhapura – Pollonnaruwa periods. The surplus makes space for leisure which is compulsory for complex art. Given the success in the agrarian economy in the banks of Malwathu Oya, at that time, Sri Lanka could produce something more than its subsistence which led, to a certain extent, to the revival of art and culture-incorporated by imported Buddhism.
According to Newton Gunasinha, this established nature of surplus in the agrarian economy lasted only in the Anuradhapura era and, to a lesser extend, in the Pollonnaruwa period (Gunasinha: 2007); however, the latter facing constant and frequent combats with the Tamil invaders from the Southern part of India. The Tamil invaders were powerful and able to de-stabilize these two Kingdoms with regular intervals. As a result, Anuradhapura and Pollannaruwa regimes were both internally and externally under threat, making no choice for them other than to withdraw to the mountainous inland with heavy losses with greater instability both in the governing system and in the agrarian economy. The Kingdoms after Polonnaruwa until the Kandyan kept on changing their governing capitals and their priority was the determination to enter a safer entity of the hilly mountains whose geographical difficulties were advantageous for hiding. Excusably, they had little time to concentrate on the agrarian economy.
As a result of the above chaotic and unstable economic and governing structures, what mattered to the monarchs was safety of themselves and of the citizens. On one hand, there was no time for an established economic basement for surplus and, on the other hand, the agrarian economy was designed only for short time subsistence. Due to the constant movements for safety, from valleys to the hills, Sri Lankan kingdoms could never establish a strong infra-structure on which the aspiration of an intergraded circuit of economic, social and cultural establishments and institutions were to be materialized.
We are exposed to the Western capital for the first time in 1505 with the advertant arrival of Portuguese to the Southern part of the coastal belt by which time our governing centre was eventually in Kotte. The glory of the valley agricultural economy was more or less gone and the cultural revival of the Anuradhapura era was fading away.
But with the Dutch, Sri Lankan systematically confronted with the export oriented industrial agriculture in the guise of spice, namely cinnamon as the chief trading item. By this time, the Dutch introduced basic administrative system to run the export oriented trade from which they intended to accumulate commercial capital in the first stage of capitalism. However, the Portuguese and Dutch did not bother to take over the central Sri Lanka since, according to their calculation, it was difficult geographically; and, on the other hand, as traders in the commercial stage of capitalism who dealt with nations cordially but not aggressively (Wijesinha:2005), they did not want an unnecessary fight which can hamper their trading motivations. There purpose was to trade with nations in seek of commercial capital but not to invade nations for the purpose of colonizing.
Under-developed, Semi-feudal Sri Lankan Economy:
The British, who came in 1796, were far more systematic and better rulers than both Portuguese and Dutch. This is exemplified by the fact that, within 19 years, they completely took control of the entire Sri Lanka including the Kandyan kingdom which was not concurred by the previous two colonizers. They represented the colonial period of capitalistic expansion which transferred;
economic surplus through unequal terms of trade by virtue of a colonial imposed international division of labour. But the previous two colonizers who represent the mercantile phase of capitalism which transferred economic surpluses through looting and plundering, disguised as trade (Hoogwelt 1997:17).
It is the British who directly introduced the mode western capital to the underdeveloped agrarian economic structure in Sri Lanka. The term ‘underdevelopment’ here refers to a total phenomenon of economic activities and the socio-cultural components in a society (Silva 1982: 45). It is a question of the barriers to the growth of productive forces which the priveiling production relations constitute. As we mention before, the historic destablalization of Sri Lankan agrarian economy could not produce a surplus to the socio-cultural development of the superstructure.
Colonization:
The purpose of the British was to, like any other colonizer of the time, to transfer the economic surplus of pre-industrial overseas community back to Europe. They did not want to change these societies unless their obligations were not disturbed. This surplus is actually, part of the production which was consumed by that community. This made the pre-industrial communities further helpless or poorer while the commercial capital piled-up as ‘wealth’ in the European nations. However, the dualistic nature of this economy was that the British kept the former feudalistic mode of relations intact for their own benefits in the service sectors, while transforming the other aspects of the economy to a more modernistic one. This situation is described by W.D. Lakshman as follow;
(I) n terms of extend and depth, however, there was no parallel to the British influence on economy, society and political process of Sri Lanka. The British not only introduced and commenced production of new crops like coffee, tea and rubber, but also brought the plantation form of production management into the traditional economy. The traditional rural economy and the social formation were exposed to powerful foreign ‘mainly British’ production and finance capital. Yet the traditional rural economic and social practices remained side by side with a new economic activities introduced by foreign capital (Lakshman 1997:3).
The dualistic nature of the Sri Lankan economic and of the socio-cultural spectrum began this way. Despite the economic modernity that they brought to Sri Lanka through industrial capital, the socio- cultural backwardness in the indigenous agrarian foundations continued throughout the British colonization to this day. Even at the political independence, according to Lakshman, Sri Lanka can be characterized as having the export oriented economy with a ‘so called’ dual economic structure in which interrelationship between ‘modern’ and the ‘traditional’ sectors were minimal. The modern economy comprised of plantations, transport and communications, external trade and public administration, and the traditional sector of present agriculture, small scale fishing, cottage industry and various informal sector service activities (Lakshman 1997:4). Sri Lankan socio-economic fabric was comprised both of a modern and a pre-modern structure at the same time and an unequal development in the both sectors which did not have an organic interrelationship. This situation is more theoretically articulated by Newton Gunasinhe in this Ph.D. thesis, Changing Socio-economic Relation in the Kandyan Country side (1990) as follows;
The transition from the hegemony of the one mode of production to that of another occurs in these colonial conditions not as a unileanier progression where all the pre-capitalist relations are wiped out and replaced by bourgeoisie relations of productions. In fact many relations of production are extracted from the all mode and grafted on the emerging capitalist structure (Gunasinghe 2007: 16).
This dualistic system could not produce the dramatic change of production relations as it did in the industrialized nations, but it could only bring the civilization to the level of underdevelopment and socio-cultural hybridity and disintegration that we experience in the colonized nations like us, through mercantile relations. Sri Lanka benefited from the colonization; and from the vigorous geographical extension of capitalism run by a center physically located in great Britain in transforming its agrarian subsistence, even though partially, into a more modern one. Sri Lanka got the missionary seal for the legitamecy to abandon the former way of life to enter into the twentieth century.
Independence and Its Crisis:
Under the British occupancy, they launched a greater regressive mechanism through its military potential to suppress the ethnic, linguistic, economic, territorial disparities and resulted tensions in the indigenous Sri Lanka. The tensions were not visible. The power and hegemony that they forced over the community were so huge that the locals could not raise the voice against their master. At the same time, the British fertilized the conditions, directly or indirectly, to the emergence of local middle class whom they could relay on for the continuation and subsistence of the export oriented plantation economy that they established here. For the lower grade jobs of this commercial and service economy, British wanted an English speaking group of people from the locals whom can be used, first, as apprentices of their economy and, secondly, as mediates between the British political economy and the indigenous community. Those people were an economically able class even before the emergence of the crown colony economy, since most of them were the members of the farming class (Govigama) which was one of the highest stratums of the Sri Lanka pre and post-colonial class stratification. The farming class inherited a proportionately bigger amount of land in Sri Lanka other than the other classes (Jayawardhana 2006: xix).
Apart from the Govigama, the Karawa and the Salagama castes also had accessed to become mediators in the British economy and, later to be the political leaders in receiving the domineering power and subsequently the political independence from the British. This new class was significant in the power sharing game of the post independence Sri Lanka and their intermediation to the political economy and its outcomes was central. The role that this class played after independence importantly impacted on to the issues that came up; when the British transmitted their power to those local agents whom they could relay on.
Even if the British held an autonounces power over its colonies in many Asian and African continents, the problems were silently piling up during their regimes. After independence, the colonial grip was loosened and those problems came to the surface with such strength that the local agents could not cope with. Since the universal franchise that was granted to Sri Lanka during the Donoughmore in the early 1930s, most of the governments happened to loose power time to time on the basis of people’s will, if their welfare requirements were not met. The West Minister Parliamentary system that we borrowed from the British was highly tangible and vuluerable. Hence, this was changed under 1978 constitution. However, the local middle class who held the government steering wheel adapted a methodology of misleading the general public who was attracted to the superficial and popular promises of the welfare state.
1971 Insurrection:
Sri Lanka enjoyed the benefit of the free education from 1938, through the Central College concept by C.W.W. Kannangara, who made vernacular education essential for all the pupils. Even before the British, the missionary education was started by Dutch, basically in the Northern and Southern coastal belts in Sri Lanka. Dutch education signaled the arrival of the Western mode of education to the country. However, it must be mention here that the Northern ethnic Tamils immensely benefited from this system up-today. It was helpful to them to inculcate a better, a systematic education for its community which unfortunately got stuck by the socio-political changes made by the majority Sinhalese later on. The colonial plantation economy was reaching its maximum, was also not further expanding in some other form and new industries were not introduced to the economy. As the economic and social conditions went downhill and they were not absorbed by the Sri Lanka’s dual economy, the educated Tamil youths responded to the Sinhalese government violently. The fewer amount of jobs created by the export oriented plantation economy was not sufficient to accommodate them successfully in comparison to the rapidly growing educated youth population whether they came from south or north clearly outnumbering the amount of jobs annually generated by the economy. As a result, there was a great tension and unrest among the youths who desperately tried to step down from the parental family to create one of theirs. A job was the number one requirement for a formation of a new family.
On the other hand, Sri Lanka education system did not change according to the changes took place in the economic infrastructure. In other words, the socio-economic changes underwent by the system were not incorporated into the education system. So, there was a great gap between the true requirement of the economy and the supply from the education system. This was one of greatest dilemmas faced by the post- independent Sri Lanka.
This was the time of a left wing politics in the world. The postwar world was highly polarized in the context of the cold war. The United Stated and the Soviet Union represented the two camps which shared the equilibrium of the world power. Both polars engaged in a subtle power struggle to claim the world super power and, on this ground and, in both camps, the propaganda machines and clandestine politics operated to reach this. The countries in the periphery were caught in this political agenda and propaganda. The aurora of left shaded in Asia. The youth who were educated in the West returned to the mother lands having a great inspiration to experiment what they learnt theoretically on their soil. On that aspiration, by this time, we find Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, Jawalall Neru in India, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, Colvin R. de Silva and N.M. Perera in Sri Lanka to name few. Apart from academized bourgeois socialists such as above, there was another radical stream which was developing globally. It was the time also of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Che Min, and Mao Zedong. When the European educated Marxists and socialists were aiming to reform the liberal capitalistic welfare state, the young radical leftists also started questioning the reformist older generation through armed rebellions. On the other hand, the reformists did not even have a sufficient time show the results of their structural changes when radicals came up against them. When the JVP took arms against the Sirimawo Bandaranaike coalition government, which was theoretically run by the academized socialists with a great spirit of nationalization, the TULF led youths in north also stated responding to the government in similar fashion. Both rebellions were successfully controlled by authoritarian militarism launched by the state. But both emerged again in a more violent form. This was one of the most tragic phenomenons the post-independent Sri Lanka happened to experience. This event as well as the second insurrection we regrettably mention in this paper in memory the generation of youths who scarified their lives in hope for a better world. It is this generation to whom Boodie Keerthesena, the director of movie Mille Soya, devotes his movie to and we, the authors of this paper, by and large, represent.
Opening Doors and Its Impacts:
The UNP, one of the oldest political parties in the country, which swept to power 1977, introduced a politico-economical package to unconditionally embrace the neo-liberal capitalism. Henceforth, Sri Lanka took a u-turn.
By this time, the global economy was also undergoing significant changes. It was an economical paradigm to cope with the new wave of economic reforms of the global level sphereheaded by Margret Thacher and Ronald Reagan (Sarwanandan 2005:03). The nationalization of the plantation sector, imposed substitution industrialization as well as price control, exchange control and interest rates of the closed 1970-1977 welfare regime were totally dismantled. The new export oriented economic liberalization introduced floating of the national currency, relaxation of exchange control, foreign investment intensive, tax holydays, reduction in import and export duty rates, withdrawal of non tariff barriers to trade and price controls, promotion of labour export to middle East and a promotion of tourism instead of the highly beauroratization of the state dominated nationalized economy (ibid: 3-5).
The insufficiency of the capital was the main reason to relay on the private foreign investment, export orientation, immigrant labour and denationalization and privatization. According to Danny Attapattu;
economic policy reforms recognized the importance of international capital inflows in a strategy of economic growth through export oriented industrialization (Lakshman,1997: 84 ).
So, the whole purpose of these drastic changes was to enhance the national growth and it was the main reason for Sri Lanka’s under-development. The underdevelopment resulted by lack of capital and the backwardness of the growth of the economy actually created the deepest politico-socio-economic problems in the post 1977 epoch. This aspect of the economy was attempted to be addressed by almost all the leaders after independence by introducing all the basic economic models globally available at that time. The socialist form of economy, mixed economy and liberalized economy were introduced to Sri Lanka from times to time by various governments. As Sri Lanka does not have the most commercially marketable national resources such as petroleum, coal, iron, minerals etc. to be exported to the industrialized nations; in 1977, the government tried to get the benefit of the free- floating surplus capital of the developed nations through investments, consumerism, exports and tourism. Since the open market economy in Sri Lanka has widely been discussed in various academic contexts, we do not go into details, but we will investigate into the post 77’ phenomenon that falling line with the issues portrayed in the movie that we intend to analyze in this paper.
1983 ‘Black July’ and 1988/89 Insurrection:
The 1977 open market economy, to a greater extent, changed the basement of the indigenous subsistent agricultural economy which lasted undisturbed for centuries. On the other hand, the closed economy in the 70-77 era was highly beneficent for the small scale farmers who were adapting themselves to the industrial agriculture promoted in the 1960s and, especially, in the 70-77 government. The farmers were able to sell their products at a stable price since price did not fluctuate and, particularly, the prices and rates were fixed during this period. At the same time, since the economy was closed; the import goods did not come to the local market to compete with the local products.
This situation, especially, impacted on the Northern and Eastern cultivators who were stabilizing their income. With the introduction of open market economy and unrestrained flow of import goods to the local market, the subsistent farming agriculture was completely devastated in the face of low priced substitutions that came from industrial agricultural countries or even neighboring countries.
The farmers had a reasonable income to educate the youth and to fulfill their other requirements on the stability of the prices for their products but, in the open market context, the desperation of the youths grew. This is the main root cause for the Tamil youth uprising in early part of 1980s. The above phenomenon has historically been marked by 1983 Black July whose history actually goes back to the deliberate marginalization of the ethnic minority by the majority Sinhalese and the ethnic antagonism which grew over time, but did not come to surface under the political and military maneuvers of the British. It is during the Black July and afterwards in 1980s that Sri Lanka experienced a massive form of off-shore ethnic mobilization to the Central Europe, perhaps giving the first prototypical example for the human migration that reflects in some incident in the movie Mille Soya.
The 1988/89 youth insurrection which followed after few years of Black July is also a violent form of reaction to the open market economy and to the neo-liberalism which started dominantly prevailing in the country. The traditional pleasant culture started changing for the first time and the youth insurrection was also an emotional reactionary turned out militarism to what they believed as ‘the cultural degradation’ in the open market economy. As Herbamas believes, it can be termed as a fundamentalistic response against the modern secularism which changes psychological comfort of the traditional way of life (Herbamas: 2007). When the South revolved against the economic reforms introduced by Sinhala politicians, the North did the same on both the politico-economic and the ethic identity which went hand in hand. Both struggles, symbolically, borrowed a lot from and identified with their violent histories and that is why they were easily branded as ‘terrorists’ or ‘fundamentalists’ or ‘anti-modern’ rebels. However, the human catastrophe that has been brought into Sri Lanka through those opened doors and the youth who were specially crushed by the system have become the focal point of the movie Mille Soya. In that respect, this study as well as the movie inevitably corresponds a degree of emotional recollections to all those, knowingly or unknowingly, whatever ethnic identity they belonged to, who fought intuitionally but not rationally in giving their lives to a nostalgic course that aimed to return to past. Simply by virtue of that, here, the spirit of the fight is not underestimated whatsoever.
Militarization of the Sri Lankan Society:
Due to the armed struggles both in South as well as in North- East and due to the militarized response from the totalitarian liberal state which lasted for decades, the Sri Lanka society became fast militarized. The film exposes, in many instances, scenes of violence throughout the movie. The bomb explosion in the cities by the Tamil rebels, looting, stabbing, murders and other modes of domestic violences, gang battles, arrests, unidentified abductions, police raiding and political violence became the very alphabet of the political dialogue. The trauma of violence disheartened youths of our time. As a result of the ethno-political violence in 1980s, many ethnic youths sought political asylum in Europe. However, because of the immense militarization and terrorization in the Sri Lankan society which blocked any hope of better life for nearly the last thirty years; it is inevitable that, given the conditions of centuries of underdevelopment; the youths of the post 1978 reformations could dream of nothing but migrating to a utopian foreign territory for prosperity and future. There are technical terms such as ‘brain drain’ for the bourgeois educated middle classes, but for these underprivileged youths, it is illegal migration to Europe through various illegal means. Even after the separatist war, this Eurocentric utopian dream still persists in the minds of Sri Lankan youths. Uglier the country becomes day by day; the sustainability of such a fantasy turns out to be more obliged.
Part II- Pragmatic Articulation of the Backgrounds to the Movies: A Cinematic Reading
Mille Soya: A Cross Sectional Microcosm of the Human Catastrophe of the Post- modern Sri Lanka.
The most affected by the structural changes which were experimentally introduced by adult politicians time to time were the youths. It is they who were mostly victimized by the system for their sentimental responses which were crushed relentlessly yet their problems still remain unsolved. 2004 Boodee Keerthisena masterpiece uniquely capitalizes on a series of issues faced by the youths who were neglected, marginalized, alienated and exploited by the de-humanized and multifaceted capitalism. Boodee deliberately chooses a marginal, suburbanic coastal village in the North-western Sri Lanka as a sample to narrate his story. Due to the cultural and geographical uniqueness, this part of the island has been the centre of the illegal migrants to central Europe, especially, to Italy for the last couple of decades. From this endeavor many have succeeded to become rich, and the whole process has been a gamble between life and death. This particular entity is endemically different from the rest of island, since many of them were Christians. Christianity in Sri Lanka is a colonial inheritance and, with that, they possess a subculture of their own for over a century. Encountering Christianity as a global religion during last hundred years or so, they found it very easy to share values which were religious and extra-terrestrial by nature. On the other hand, except fishing which is minor subsistent industry on decadence currently; they did not enjoy the agricultural opportunities as in case of others in the Central, North-central, Eastern and Southern parts in the island. Once fishing did not provide livelihood for the growing population, they resided onto various other activities which may perhaps be recognized as anti-social or illegal as even shown in the movie. Illicit brewery, smuggling, robberies and murders were common to be seen. They experienced the very depth of poverty in a context of economic barrenness. Poorer they became, more intensified their struggle for survival.
The confused and complex nature of this reality as depicted in the movie can be considered a kind of hyper-reality which surpasses over (or stand against) the formal and systematic way of living and thinking of the modern man. The society is neither systematic no rational and so is their life. Nothing is human no is their life. The mess and the confused state of affairs cannot sometimes be understood through the maneuver of realism. Hence, Boodee Keerthisena correctly deviates from the Sri Lanka realistic mainstream cinema of those of Lester James Pieris, and Prasanna Vithanage or Politico-Marxist stream of that of Dharmasena Pathiraja, or from the structuralist cinema by Ashoka Handagama. He indebts to the hyper-real, pulp fiction American cinema adapted by David Cronenberg and Quentin Tarantino in his use of cartooned, non-linear arrangements and aesthetized horror. He has established himself in the movie as an atheist. This is Boodee’s second cinematic effort, after experimenting with the North American academic film theories in the debut Sihina Deshayen (1996).
The main condition that we can observe in this case is the liberalization of the economy and the inflow global capital making drastic changes in the society. The consumer culture took hold of its individuals at a time that they were not historically and cognitively prepared for such structural changes. The new global culture impacted on Sri Lankan individuals even to an extent that the neo-consumerism traumatized the men and women. It is the culture of fetish consumer goods. The so called ‘traditional, simple and moderate values and way of life’ seemed not sustainable for at least another decade. Boodee’s hyper- realism is perhaps the best technique to grasp the fragmented, alienated and uprooted souls in the indigenous Sri Lanka who was forcefully thrown into the cyclonic global capital and goods. The traditional family changed, the individuals of the collective economy of the indigenous culture became disintegrated and highly personalized, underdevelopment remained the same but consumer goods that people have never seen rained upon individuals, the image of the women changed, electronic media took hold of socio-cultural sphere, lumpen-proletariat social class emerged out of the black market economy, truth overshadowed by fabrication, technological miracle blinded the peasantry or, in short, the whole Sri Lanka became a fictional hyper-reality in South, and a militant reaction to that fiction in North. Hence, Boodee was very careful to reside onto a very unique microcosm to portray a total truth that is actually a multifaceted flux. In such a blended and an absurd context, the film Mille Soya carefully cronologizes the inter-woven and intermixed epistemological nature of truth which is a totality and disintegration at the same time. The different realities in the observed phenomena are brought to us as slides or patches with each one carrying a unique episode to demarcate and superimpose the lost cognitive map of the time that we are living. The hyper-real dreamy nature of the movie falls in line with the postmodern cinema genre in the West. The unreal characteristic of the postmodern life itself is the un-de-constructible reality that is found in the film.
Penetration of the Dream of Wealth
The characters in the movies namely Pradeep, Micheal, Maxi, Shantha and Roger are the major ones who were inspired by the stories brought to them by Samsung who had returned from Italy. They are also the ones who follow the reggae idol Bob Marley and formed a music band. By assimilating to the reggae music, they become the earliest of all who got indulged in the fantasy of European way of life and values in a fairly none-bourgeois way. They could not dream for a better life due to poverty and depended mainly either on their parents’ income or close relatives. Throughout the movie, these youths were struggling to become rich and seek wealth that they are highly deprived of, since there were no massive industries for them to be part of and gain a formal income. For them, the main income source seems to be coming from fishing or from petty jobs or from illegal means but the little that they earn is not sufficient even for the day to day survival; never mind the future prosperity. The band business was also not profitable, since they played mainly for free of charge for friends and so on. The little they earned went to the borrowed sounds and equipments. The film begins with their dismal response to their own desperate way of life. Their audiences are not happy most of the time, because they could not give them the effect with poor equipments. They have by now understood that their Bon Jour No (the band’s name) can become a good band, if they have money to improve the situation.
The lack of employments for the youths in Maravila has emerged as the core issue of the community as shown in the movie. The film opens to the audience with a flashback from the eyes of the protagonist, Pradeep who inadvertently decided to go to Italy to find a better life, since nothing worked in Marawila. He desperately tries to become a musician in a highly under-developed context of no proper touch in music, equipments or training and even no good crowd to appreciate their talents. In other words, by this time, pop music has not been recognized as a profitable industry with professionalism. For Pradeep and the friends, there had not been substantial capital to improve the quality of music and be competitive among other bands. He had the aspiration to become a reggae musician. He also understood that music is a good source of income. He had seen the ‘big bands’ such as Sunflowers and Marians (names of two popular bands in the country who emerged from the same area) earned lot of money from their talents. Pradeep and his youths were aware that, given the proper practice and quality equipments, they can easily come to the surface and become popular even discarding the other popular bands such as the above mentioned. Their courage and determination to improve music and become popular remain high. They were quite sure about challenging the talents and the popularity of the other bands. This shows that if sufficient capital (wealth) was available, the issue of illegal immigrants to Italy would not have been in the social discourse. With capital, the youths (as well as anyone) can discover their lives without being any burden to the society. In Capitalistic society courage (or even positive thinking) along cannot survive.
Pradeep’s friend Maxi too was fatherless and uneducated. Pradeep depended on his brother’s income; so did Maxi on what his mother used to earn from the illegal beverage of moonshine (Kasippu). He too wants to go to Italy for the very purpose of obtaining money, since Marawila did not generate anything other than the petty businesses such as lorry driving which he finally had to contend with, after he gave up the Italy dream, after his mother’s accidental death from an explosion of a brewing steam tube. That fatalistic incident is also an example of the type of life struggle that they all were compelled to embrace. The heartbreaking situation is that Maxi’s mother died after mortgaging the land to give money for his Italy dream. His mother was ready to risk anything for the sake of son’s future. Love, pain, poverty and death are all mingled in her true and fearless character. This is one way to portray the human agony in this cornered atmosphere.
One day even Pradeep and his clan had to participate in one of such illegal smugglings which took place in the neighbourhood, without considering seriously the damaged that is caused to the prestige of the family name. Such things were very common and on one can escape from that reality. Pradeep was not willing to participate in that illicit activity but the under the persuading words from her friends he just did that. His elder brother, Jayalal, explodes with great anger by even hitting Pradeep mentioning that he should think of the untarnished family fame before getting involved in such acts. There is a degree of symbolic value attached to people’s lives despite these difficult situations which keep on demanding on the violation of laws and values. They all considered the black mark that such illegitimate acts may vest on female, in this case, his younger sister. Individual symbolic values were maintained even when the ground reality did support for the evil to come. Ideologically, people believed in values in their minds but physically the body stood amidst proliferating evils.
As a way out of fathomless poverty and in pursuit of his own desires, Pradeep decided to become a musician and the same dream is shared by his friends. Music in Sri Lanka became one of the major gambling sources of income for the urban youths as well as for those who migrated to Colombo city from the village set ups under the new entertainment culture that widely spreaded after the open market economy. Since it is not an industry yet, there is always a risk for someone who wanted to show up music. Despite whatever talents you may possess, you can sometimes be successful or even fail, given the unfavorable circumstances. This was not the same in the European mass cultures. There, for a talented and innovative band, it was a very reliable way to accumulate capital and such band, without much effort, could establish themselves under the popular genre of open stage demonstrations. The pop genre caters a massive crowd who is conscious of what they consume. The surplus capital in those countries can afford to accommodate different genres of music (or art) and crowd can pay for such specific efforts. That way, the even unique styles that are not commonly heard continue to survive. Pradeep’s efforts do not result much in Maravila and he and his clan were struggling with a poor economy and with mix responses and expectations from the public. Music is also portrayed as a gamble where Maxi, in one of their failed open shows, utters a meaningless hymn to the audience who, though unaware of what it is, cheers them enthusiastically. Anything can hit them. It is not a trained audience that they have to cater but a group of people who knows nothing about music but something for their feet. It is the nature of the gambling casino capital that is free- flowing today in the postmodern Sri Lanka. One has to risk and gamble for the victory. However, the last dream for Pradeep to establish themselves as a financially stable band was not materialized. Then he insists that he wants to go Italy where, as he thinks, he will be able to be part of the wealth through which he could meet the European iconic reggae dream.
Mobilization to Euro-Centric Fantasy
According to Samir Amin, the dominant Euro-centric ideology under consideration does not only propose a vision of the world. It is also a political project on a global scale: a project of homogenization through imitation and catching up (Amin 1989:111). Amin identifies Christianity as a central basis for European culture and one of the key characteristic of the construction of the Euro-centrism (Ibid: 1998). Obviously, Sri Lanka too underwent the missionary Christianity as part of the colonization. This particular entity that is focused in the movie called Marawila as well as the Southern coastal belt were the first entities to convert to Christianity. In that case, the filmmaker has intelligently chosen the correct setting and a plot to show that the implantation of the Eurocentric fantasy was not accidental but essential.
Similarly, the concept Euro-centrism is central to the phenomenon called modern capitalistic development. In the cause of Capitalistic development, a gigantic transformation took place at every level of societies in every region of the globe including Western nations. So, modernity and its development targets at an absolute process of homogenization of the world. The framework of Euro-centrism invariably and inevitably penetrates to the subjects who live under the condition of capitalistic mode of development. It stimulates huge human migration to the geographical entities where progress and wealth constitute the fundamental foundation of the modern world. Subsequently, it also implants a fantasy image of prosperity and progress in the consciousness of human subjects. As a result, by the rational measurements of the potentiality of entering the modern world, the concept of development essentially creates a center-periphery polarization in which the peripheries become consistently dependent on the centers on the basis of accumulation of capital and possession of wealth. In the process, the peripheries experience a tension and frustration about their national potentials, technological inabilities and politico-economical dependencies which can mount everyday on their own fate. These peripheries are unconsciously aware about their own suspicion as to whether they can ever come to term with the improved material conditions of those of Euro-Americanism by being marginalized, dependent pre-industrial societies for a long time. The prosperity of the modern world is left only to be dreamt or fantasized for those who are dragging behind the already fixed formulation, measurements and indexes of development which seem insurmountable to meet and overcome. In the film, people like Samsun acts like volunteer mediators, messengers or propagators to implant the ‘dream of wealth’ to those who struggle for survival in the peripheries. They sometimes enlarge the scene once they are back home. For an example, he describes prawns in Napoli in Italy to these coastal youths who are familiar with such sea fish as bigger than those in Sri Lanka. Every thing is ‘bigger’ than those in the centers whether they are accurate or not as over-determined in the minds of the locals as to how the ideology on the Euro-centric fantasy works in the colonial slaves. That seems to be a pathological and psychological dependency in the political body of the colonized nations. The centre and the periphery are still made with what is identified as the Hegelian master- slave complex. First, the colonial countries depended on their masters on wealth, trade or capital during the colonization as well as the post-independence stages. Now in the post-industrial stage, the developing nations still have to depend on them for knowledge and technology. As the third world education does still not provide the skilled labor, the boundaries are further closed for them today. So, the unskilled youths such as Pradeep cannot get legal access to the central Europe.
The huge division between the developing world and the developed world creates an uthopia about what the developing nations should be in future, according to the prototype produced by the dominant ideology of the capitalism. The adventure in acquiring wealth is what has riskily been undertaken by the colonial subjects in sought of this utopian fantasy that we witness throughout the movie Mille Soya. The whole process is a gamble between life and death. They throw themselves in this risky water on assumption that the present situation is worst than the difficulty in the adventure.
The signs of Euro-centric fantasy are every where in the real life of the subjects that we talk about in this movie. Pradeep is fascinated by the image of one of the greatest de-bourgeois root reggae musician called Bob Marley and, he tries to imitate his songs, his life style and his music. His posters are pasted in the small boutiques, in Pradeep’s home and in his musical parlors and so on and so forth. Marley’s image, of course, had a great impact on the radical anti-systemic and anti-establishmental youths in the world. Similar welcome is there for Che Guevara whose picture is seen in the t-shirt worn by Sagara. Pradeep and his colleagues too share same street values adapted in the 60s and 70s anti- capitalistic, anti-Western, radical pop culture which Bob Marley represents. Pradeep is a great follower of Marley, and he has acquired his music and fairly assimilated into the image of the militant, radical reggae icon of the era. This is a strong sign that can be decoded as the filtration of one of the powerful Western images to the Sri Lankan underground socio-cultural context. Popular culture too functions as a vehicle to proliferate Euro-centric images.
Another important aspect, which had a devastating effect on the youth of this region, is the coming of the wealth from Italy. When Samson (Jackson Anthony) returns from Italy, he proudly shows his ability to enjoy wealth and consumerism. He shows that he has brought a new house in the city and a new van, and spends lavishly in front of surprised, open-mouthed youths who watch the way he portrays himself as a hero in the world of money in amazement. At the same time, he symbolizes the charisma of consumerism by toyingly playing with fetish commodities such as fancy lighters, foreign liquor, and such like commodities which can have a fantasmaic impact on the downtrodden proletariats at Maravila. They are caught in the empty signification of consumer heroism and then determined to seek fetishism of the consumer capitalism which keeps on producing such artificial, never ending signs which are mostly empty but eye-catching. The only problem in it is that the youths get caught in the fake feeling of ‘completeness of life’ that is speculatively over-deterministic. For the completeness, you need to buy fetish goods that are promoted in the market. They are expensive. So are their lives, since they die trying.
Human Migration
In seek of the utopia of Euro-centric prosperity, these youths, including the millions of others in the peripheries such as Asia, Africa or Latin America; have to undertake a long, retarded and painstaking journey to illegally cross the borders of the nation state to reach their dream. The whole process of illegal human migration is risky, because global human migration is just ‘one way traffic’. The center does not welcome the inhabitants of the periphery in millions who were once under their own crown colonies. But now they choose people from periphery under a classic term called ‘skilled labor’; in which they employ them for specific mental and manual labour in their industrial and commercial entities. Even though the term ‘globalization’ stimulates the idea of free human mobilization across the globe in the guise of the disappearance of the national boundaries, this has never become a reality for the third world. The people in the periphery had a very limited access to the central metropolitans where advanced Capitalism functions. Even though the citizens of the advanced capitalistic countries would come to the second or the third worlds for various purposes such as recreation or business, the people in a developing countries could hardly get an opportunity to access to the centers. At the time of writing this paper, on grounds of human rights, the situation has intensified further even on education or student visas. There is an ‘imaginary wall’ between the developed and the developing nations. One can also say it is rather physical than imaginary. Since many youths in the developing nations are mainly unskilled due to the under-development in education, they bypass the proper channel of skilled labor migration that is limited and choose the deadly lybrinith of deaths, illegal transactions, deportation, bribery, manipulations and sometimes slavery. They gets cheated by their own people who work profitably as mediators and agents. They get betrayed by their own fellows. They get humiliated by unknown nations. The gender divisions are forgotten. The people are packed into a single room like cattle, and loaded into luggage carrier in a bus or lorry like goods. They walk thousands of miles by foot. Days and weeks spent in hunger. In short, you are left in a totally impossible nightmare of life and death. You are reduced to an animal. You undergo this fatalistic exhausting journey for nothing but an imaginary wealth that you need to buy the dream that consumerism has created in you. You achieve one and they will give you another. This is a vicious circle that no one can challenge.
Mille Soya as a Filmic Narration:
Apart from the socio-political perspective that we have discussed so far, there is a substantial amount of cinematic craftsmanship that immensely supported in exploring the seriousness of the de-humanization in the above phenomena. Some of such important features will be discussed here. In part I, we were describing that the Sri Lankan political economy is endemically dualistic due to the hybridity of the pre-industrial under-developed features and the post modern market orientations. As a result, there is a doubleness in the individual souls today. The pre-modern values and modern aspects of individuality exist in a single body, at the same time. Sri Lankans, in their look, are secularist but, inside, they are simultaneously conventionalists. One can be an admirer of the radical Marxist Che Guevara and paste his poster on the walls and worship the village monk and get the blessings, at the same time, as done by Pradeep in the movie. He follows Marley who is Rastafarinian but does not hesitate to worship the monk by keeping his guitar aside. The proper economy functions at the surface and underneath that the black economy runs. One becomes a fisherman in the day light in economy the proper and a smuggler at night in the black economy. The proper migration takes place through the Katunayake International Airport and illegal migration in the hands of Kingsley. Duality continues to function in these countries. Therefore, the realities remained highly complex and integrated in the developing world.
As a result, the writers in the developing world borrowed from West a literary technique called hyper- realism in 1980s against the established form of the realism. In the movie Mille Soya too, we find some degree of hyper- realism being constantly used to grasp the complexed nature of the human existence, relationships and events in this suburban context at Maravila. The realities that are depicted in the movie sometimes seem unrelated and even fragmentalized. Dissecting one reality from the other or disorienting on scene from the other is not easy. For an example, Micheal talks about money over the dead bodies after the bomb explosion. Pradeep mocks at the injuries in the face of his friend after an inadvertent night errand in the previous night, when they both were witnessing the death body of a neighboring villager who has been stabbed to death. Many such incidents are found in the movie.
Boodee is very careful not to be subjective in these adversaries. He does not take part in these events. He always maintains a distance and keeps away from judgments. For an example, when Shantha’s body becomes neutralized after suffocation in the Bulgarian boarder, the group having to continue the journey after a brief and intense expression of emotions, Pradeep makes up his mind and encourages others to move. Boodee portrays him as a rational man never passing judgments over his actions. Another man dies out of exhaustion in the snowy mountains in Bulgeria, Roger takes his money and goes on. No subjective emotions are shown throughout. These realities are portrayed as patches or as billboards or perhaps slides. They seem unmatched with one another, but if carefully and rationally viewed, they are integrated to the total presco explicitly. They seem unreal but portray the very reality of the human conditions in the current world. Their nightmares do catharsis the fantasy and subconciousness in which unachievable is achieved, and the fanciful songs explore the unfulfilled desires of our generation. Reality and fantasy are once integrated and then separated. The expectations that will never be materialized are shown in the dreamy songs such as Sudu Andumin by Jaya Sri and the duet Ganthire, Ganthire by Uresha Ravihari and, to some extent, in the song Yard in Maravila. As a depiction of a simple futuristic optimism of an ordinary youths’ dream of marriage and family, the songs represent their subconciousness in a highly antagonistic, brutalized and alienated world.
However, the musicality of the movie remains highly realistic against the fancifulness of the commercial movies. Pradeep’s adaptation of Bob Marley’s No women no cry fixes beautifully to the very reality of the marginalized ‘Yard of Maravila’. At the same time, from beginning to the end of the movie, we often find the soft commercial reggae versions of the popular Sri Lankan- Austria band Jayasri whose real story has produced a stimulus for the youths in our futile soil during the last decade.
The unrythmic and fast moving momentum of the lives of the youths befit to the rapid mobility of the episodes of the movie which have been arranged with a superior touch of editing. It does not allow us to stay on with one single event and its outcomes. For an example, it does not permit us to cry or to be emotional in one particular tragedy, as it very quickly moves to the other scene which is hilarious. This is the quickness or the instance reality of the de-emotionalized, de-aesthetized and segregated postmodern life today.
Boodee’s influence in avant-garde culture and bohemianism are exposited in his use of caricatures and cartoons which are usefully utilized to portray some degree of hyper- reality. In one such cartoons, the moon is plucked by a hook by an unknown, when a youth is about to embrace it. The dream of the youths is taken away from them by adults, politics as well as by their own follies. This is a powerful metaphor to satirize the contemporary politics, the adults and the systems which does not assist the youths to fulfill their desires. This technique was consciously used against the dominant realism which demands the necessary relationship between cause and effect. Instead the psychoanalytical realities including fragmented and intermixed fantasies are de-hegemonized by the use of hyper-realism. In the same way, Boodee keeps the scattered pieces in the same places where he found them without trying to fix them.
Conclusion
The uniqueness of this movie rests on the fact that it does not attempt to depict the ‘over- determined’ popular issues in Sri Lankan politics such as ethnic problem, political corruptions, family and militarism and so on. Instead it swiftly moves to a less talked but a core issue of desperate seeking of wealth in a far away land and victimization of a generation who was blinded by the new values under the consumerism and fetish commodities. In addition, it displays how the people in the desperate corners in the world struggle and sacrifice their lives for a dream that is not so easy to reach in the face of global function of de-humanized capitalism which ‘has drowned the sentimentalism in the icy water of egoistical calculation’ (Marx 2002: 222).
Milla Soya is capitalizing on the human avalanche of materialism and the exodus of the Sri Lankan youths in pursuit of the prosperity to the European centers in fulfillment of their dream of success. As once metioned in the beginning of this criticism, even in the mid of this aggravated catastrophe, their hopes are still kept alive. The cinematic narration was proficient enough to explore the dualistic nature of the under-developed Sri Lanka in a context of haphazard inflow of consumer capital in the post open market economy. It has become a unique cross-sectional example of the alienated youths and their unmeeting of the dream of prosperity. This specific entity that has been selected by the director is a fabulous sample of the totality of truth that we experience today across the island. Deviating from the established genre of the realistic cinematography, the film has trans-nationally explored our experience of globalization to the world by selecting a group of youths who were turned upside-down by the Euro-centric dream of the post -global Capitalism.
As Boodee mentions in the introductory text of the movie, that this is the story of the generation who were born between 1966-1975 and was lucky enough to survive two bloody revolutions and the ethnic conflict to dream for a better tomorrow. This is their adventurous journey into hope. His words best summarizes the entire effort.
Reference:
Amir, Samin (1989) Eurocentrism, Aakar Books, Delhi.
De Silva, S.B.D. (1982) The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, Rutledge, London.
Gunasinhe, Newton (2007) Changing Socio-Economic Relations in Kandyan Countryside, SSA, Colombo.
Harbarmas, Jugan (2007) The Future of Human Nature, Polity, London.
Hoogwelt, Ankie (1997) Globalization and the Post Colonial World, Routledge, London.
Jayawardhana, Kumari (2006) Sokkan Lokkan Wu Wagai, SSA, Colombo.
Lakshman, WD (1997) Dilemmas of Development, Sri Lanka Association of Economists, Colombo.
Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederic (1988) Selected Works, Penguin, London.
Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederic (2002) The Communist Manifesto, Penguin, Delhi.
Saravanandan, Muttukrishna (2005) Economic Reforms in Sri Lanka, ICES, Colombo.
Wijesinha, Rajiva (2006) The Foundations of Modern Society, Foundation Books, Calcutta.
Appendix
Mille Soya: Production Crew
Written and Directed: Boodee Keerthisena
Producer: Buddhi Keerthisena
Cinematography: KA Dharmasene/ Moshe Ben Yaish
Editor: Ravindra Guruge
Original Score: Lakshman Joseph de Seram
Music Contribution: Jaya Sri, Wild Fire, Ernie Pieris,
Staring
Pradeep: Mahendra Perera
Samson: Jackson Antony
Princy: Sangeetha Weerarathne
Michael: Roger Senevirathne
Sagara: Sanath Gunathilaka
Kingsley: Ravindra Randeniya
Jude: Sriyantha Mendis
Saliya: Wasantha Wittachchi
Chamara: Channa Perera
Pradeep’s Mother: Veena Jayakody
Pradeep’s Sister: Nadee Kammellaweera
Maxi: Kamal Addaraarachchi
Maxi’s Mother: Suvineetha Weerasinhe
Shantha: Victor Ramanayake
Nilanthi: Dihani Ashokamala Ekanayake
Raju : Linton Semage
Roger: Pradeep Hettiarachchi
Other Actors: W. Jayasiri/ Nawanandana Wijesinhe/ Tim Dusson/ Edward Gunawardhane/Anthony Surendra
