By Nishantha Alwis
The Sri Lankan movie, Sumitra Peries’ “Gehenu Lamai” (1978) restored by Film Heritage Foundation in association with the Lester James Peries and Sumitra Peries Foundation, has been selected for a world premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival 2025.
The film has been restored under the aegis of FISCH: France- India – Sri Lanka Cine Heritage – Saving Film Across Borders – a pioneering international collaboration between Film Heritage Foundation, the Embassy of France and the French Institute in India and the Embassy of France in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, dedicated to restoring and preserving cinematic heritage.
Sumitra Peries debut film, awarded Outstanding Film of the Year at the 1978 London Film Festival, tells the story of two young sisters in a Sri Lankan village whose romantic dreams and aspirations are crushed by the class barrier and the conflict between tradition and progress.
Restored by Film Heritage Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with the Lester James Peries and Sumitra Peries Foundation.
Funding provided by a grant under the aegis of FISCH: France- India – Sri Lanka Cine Heritage – Saving Film Across Borders.
Gehenu Lamai was restored using the best surviving elements: the 35 mm combined dupe negative and two 35 mm release prints preserved at the National Film Corporation of Sri Lanka.
The idea of a restauration project began in 2018 when Shivendra Singh Dungarpur from Film Heritage Foundation visited Colombo as a part of a film rescue mission within various film storage spaces. During this visit, Sumitra Peries discussed the possibility of restoring some of her films, including Gehenu Lamai.
In 2024, Sri Lankan and French partners approached the French Embassy in Sri Lanka and the Maldives in order to restore a Sri Lankan movie. Thus, the FISCH project was born, and funding enabled the Film Heritage Foundation to restore Gehenu Lamai in partnership with Lester James Peries and Sumitra Peries Foundation.
Fortunately, there were surviving film elements of “Gehenu Lamai” preserved at the National Film Corporation of Sri Lanka that were shipped to L’Immagine Ritrovata, the film restoration lab in Bologna.
On inspection at the Film Heritage Foundation archive and at the lab in Bologna, the conservators discovered that the condition of the reels varied from average to poor to critical with several reels exhibiting tears, broken sprockets, blockage, shrinkage, emulsion damage, buckling and warping. Several hours were spent on the film repair – repairing damaged perforations and tears and redoing tape splices to prepare it for scanning which was done in 4K.
In the film comparison stage, the lab found that one of the positives was the vintage release of the Sri Lankan version that had additional shots and this positive was used as a guide for the restored version. Although second generation, the dupe negative had the best photographic quality, but had embedded subtitles. The lower photographic contrast of the dupe negative allowed to recover more details and hence it was used as a main element for restoration. Hours of work went into the digital restoration to correct distortions and recover the image as faithfully as possible.
The sound restoration was particularly challenging. The quality of the sound was generally low and varied with issues such as click, crackle, hiss, gaps and damaged optical sound tracks that rendered the sound inaudible in parts, high electrical noise and distortion.
“In choosing to restore Gehenu Lamai, directorial debut of Sumitra Peries, we sought not only to safeguard a cornerstone of Sri Lanka’s film history, but also to bring a masterpiece of women’s storytelling back into the light. France is honored to stand with Sri Lanka in preserving its rich cinematic heritage. This lies at the heart of our cultural commitment: preserving the arts and their memory. A film is made to be seen; not to sleep on reels, but to live on screen. The spotlight on Sri Lankan cinema at Cannes this year is a source of pride, but we also hope to see Gehenu Lamai return to Sri Lankan silver screen soon, where it can resonate once more in the hearts for which it was first created,” the Ambassador of France to Sri Lanka, Rémi Lambert said.
