Arts and Culture Minister T. B. Ekanayake, National Film Corporation Chairman Ashoka Serasinghe and Tower Hall Director General Douglas Siriwardana spent almost a day at the unique cinema archive of Hemapriya Kandamby in Kadawatha and shared the experience of decades of cinema history.

Minister Ekanayake had visited the archive on the advice of President Mahinda Rajapaksa who had learnt about this rare venture.

“This is a national asset. I invest whatever earn from this into the same project.Anyone who helps me to improve my mission of archiving will in another way be helping to preserve the arts for the future generations,” said Kandamby who is the proud owner of a private archive, which preserves films, songs, dramas, magazines, film posters, gramophones, projectors etc.

What started as a hobby several decades ago has turned out to be a full time obsession for Kandamby, but for him his love for arts, has prevented him from making it a business.

“I love films, music and arts. That has been my obsession right through my childhood. From my childhood I had this knack of collecting and preserving everything, since I thought it would be useful someday. Today I am proud that I have a wide range of film related collections, which even the national film authorities don’t possess. Dr. Lester James Peries started pushing for a film archive from the late fifties. But today, leave alone films, we have not been able to even maintain proper records of films screened during the past few decades. My theory is simple. From today onwards if we start putting aside one poster, one brochure, one film or one song book, it will automatically be preserved and archived in fifty years,” he told Reel Life when we visited his place recently.

 

 

You can spend hours at his humble home and learn so much about our film history. And he is so willing to impart whatever knowledge he possesses about our films and music industry.

“If television channels agree to telecast the old films that I legally own at least thrice I will be able to get the money just sufficient to build my dream archive with all facilities. I have given the blueprint of it to the NFC Chairman when he visited me. The saddest part is that most channels telecast films using underhand tactics. I am not going to stoop to such corrupt levels. You might be shocked to hear that a popular state owned television channel owes me about 2.5 million rupees for the contract I signed with the previous to telecast my films. After the new chairman was appointed nothing has materialized. I want to bring this harassment to the notice of the President. This particualr channel did not even telecast the news item of the minister's visit to my archive.

The team that arrived on the President's directive was stunned to say the least. I am doing this for the people of this country. Despite threats to my life by corrupt people, I will continue this mission until I build the sophisticated archive which is one of a kind even in the whole of Asia. I hope to sell Rs. 100 tickets top 200,000 people and start building my fully-fledged dream archive if any body is willing to donate me a block of land. I hope the arts loving President Mahinda Rajapaksa will take action to realise this dream and go down in history as a national leader who made a unique cinema archive which has been lacking for several decades. I also have a plan to help needy artistes through this archive,” said a hopeful Kandamby.

Among the films legally owned by Hemapriya Kandamby are Siriyalatha, Newatha Hamuwemu, Guru Gedra, Ajasaththa, Monarathenna 1 and 2, Sooraya Soorayamai, Ajasaththa, Rahasak Nethi Rahasak, Thewatha, Aparadaya Saha Danduwama and several others.  

 

By Ramesh Uvais