Chandana awarded the Best DOP in Nigeria
Seasoned cinematographer Chandana Jayasinghe won the Best Cinematographer award at the Bayelsa International Film Festival in Nigeria for camera direction for young director Sasika Herath’s debut film ‘Sihina Samikarana’ or ‘Dream Equation’.
Competing with 3877 films from 127 countries, ‘Sihina Samikarana’ was nominated for the Best Production, the Best Screenplay, the Best Actor, the Best Actress, the Best Supporting Actor and the Best Cinematographer.
Sasika’s film was nominated and awarded following Somarathna Dissanayake’s ‘Tsunami’ was nominated and awarded at the same film festival in 2021. ‘Tsunami’ was nominated for the Best Production, the Best Director, the Best Actress, the Best Supporting Actress and the Best Cinematographer. Dissanayake won the award for the Best director, while the Best Actress was won by Niranjani Shanmugarajah.
One of the most experienced cameramen in the field, Chandana was the Director of Photography (DOP) in a number of major film production over the last two decades. He handled camera in ‘A Common Man’(2013), ‘Ehelepola Kumarihamy’(2014), ‘Kalpanthaye Sihinyak’ (2014), ‘28’ (2017), ‘Kaala’ (2027) and ‘Nidhahase Piya’ (2018), ‘According to Matthew (2018), ‘The Newspapers’ (2020), ‘Saho’ (2022) and so far he has won three national awards. He won the Presidential award for ‘28’, and According to Matthew in 2019.
Co-produced by Dr. Charith Jayatilake and Dhammika Geekiyanage, ‘Sihina Samikarana’ highlights the importance of education especially in the rural backdrop of Sri Lanka.
‘The idea for the film was from the producer Dr. Charith Jayatilake who was interested in doing a film to motivate children for education. Then we got Dharshana Vidya Aravinda to write the script’ film maker Sasika Herath said.
‘We wanted to do a film on the education system’ director said.
‘Sihina Samikarana’ revolves around a young teacher, whose dream is to promote children, who are good at mathematics and get them to help to enter University.
With so much hard work he manage to identify young student, who is genius in mathematics and trains to be sent to the university. However all his dreams are shattered when the young man is opposed by a section of the villagers, who are determined to block child’s education. He misses the first attempt to sit for the examination and the teacher arranges a plan B to achieve his target for the young student.
As a student from Sandalankawa Central College, Sasika entered teledrama and cinema as a second assistant director around 2009.
Sasika first cleared his path from the National Youth Services Council for study training in Cinema directing and script writing and flowed by cinematography.
Sasika has assisted over 50 teledramas including those directed by Anuruddha Jayasinghe, the late Jayaltha Manoratna and Lalith Ratnayake.
Sasika also has assisted Anuruddha Jayasinghe’s ‘Eka Dawasaka Api’ and three more other films yet to be released.
‘Sihina Samikarana’ is to be released soon in Sri Lanka.