New Acquisition: Three New Films by Rajee Samarasinghe

Posted April 7th, 2022 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, New Films, News / Events

Now available from Canyon Cinema: Three new films by Rajee Samarasinghe!

Show Me Other Places (2021, 11.5 minutes, color, sound, digital file or DCP)

At the center of this film is a Sri Lankan woman accessing other places in digital form, while situated in her own physical reality. Navigating through a multitude of spaces from the natural world to man-made environments as well as virtual planes, traditional relationships between the creator, the tool, and the subject are questioned, shattered and reconstructed. Reflecting on my own practice as a filmmaker working in non-fiction, the film takes a collage-like approach to examining issues around representation, verisimilitude, the ethnographic image, and the limitations of the form itself. Shot on seven different cameras (and a video synthesizer) on both film and video over the course of a decade in Sri Lanka, China, and the United States, I delve into some of my fundamental curiosities as a filmmaker.

Misery Next Time (2021, 5 minutes, B&W, sound, digital file or DCP)

This associative stream of visuals, culled from the past, reflect on the roles of art, labor, and journalism in contemporary Sri Lanka, facing a dubious future ahead. Memory and ethnographic deconstruction cascade in an obliterated form, forging a dire and prescient assemblage.

the past (2021, 5.5 minutes, color, silent, digital file or DCP)

Two people mourn an unsaid tragedy in this silent play in cinematic narrativity and melodrama, telling an elegiac tale in portraiture.