• Bavaneedha Loganathan on strengthening the future of cinema via her short film lab

Bavaneedha Loganathan is a Sri Lankan film director and producer who has been gaining significant international attention. One of her more recent achievements was her selection as a Berlinale Talents Footprints – Mastercard Enablement Programme Fellow at the Berlinale or Berlin International Film Festival, held this year from 13-23 February.

The talent campus, she told The Daily Morning, gave opportunities for knowledge sharing, networking, and training. The Mastercard Enablement Programme specifically recognised filmmaking and film activism, with the grant she received supporting her short film lab. The fellowship also provides year-long mentorship and the opportunity for life-long collaboration. However, beyond funding and support for her personally, Loganathan pointed out that the opportunity enabled the country to merge with international efforts and gain awareness.

According to Loganathan, to qualify for the fellowship, you need to first have been selected for Berlinale Talents, which she did in 2020. This was a turning point in her life and took place during the early stages of her career. The opportunity allowed her to be more organised in her approach to film screenings and workshops and also kick-started her career as a producer.

In 2024, Loganathan started a short film lab to empower underprivileged communities. The Big Eye Talents Short Film Lab was built on a grant received from Global Media Makers, a partnership between Film Independent and the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

The first batch of fellows was selected at the end of last year and the support the lab has received thus far gave Loganathan the confidence to apply for the Mastercard Enablement Programme, which she also received.

In conversation with us, Loganathan spoke about the opportunities this fellowship would give not just her, but also talented filmmakers from Sri Lanka’s underprivileged communities.

Following are excerpts from the interview:

Tell us about the short film lab and how you hope to use the grant you received?

We can use the grant in any way, with some using it to conduct workshops and others using it for film screenings. I applied for the grant to support my short film lab, which is for underprivileged, LGBTQIA+, marginalised, and neglected communities.

Applicants can submit their scripts to us and we will select 10 fellows. We will then connect them with local and international mentors and provide training to develop their scripts. The first programme of the lab was only on script development, but we are looking at finding investors for these scripts, so they can be made into a film.

The lab is a year-long incubator and its main purpose is networking and knowledge sharing. It’s an annual programme and one of the biggest things we give participants is recognition. In Sri Lanka, we can’t identify a list of next generation filmmakers, but other countries consider things like participation in labs and festivals. Sri Lanka doesn’t give its creators this recognition, but the recognition they gain through our lab enables them to connect with international markets.

The lab gives them the identity of a filmmaker, which in turn gives them access to mentors, both locally and internationally. As an example, Prasanna Vithanage is one of our mentors. People in the North, East, or even the hill-country may not be able to access him easily. But through our lab, they get that opportunity. They can work with mentors from Sri Lanka as well as countries like Malaysia and Germany to develop their ideas.

This year’s lab focuses on women. The reason for this is that last year, we received a lot of applications from women and had two female fellows. But I saw that people in rural areas are hesitant when it comes to allowing women to make films. They also don’t want women sharing spaces with men, which is the case here as there are many male filmmakers. We also haven’t seen many activism movements in filmmaking where we bring women together.

Last year’s lab focused on underprivileged communities from the up-country region. It was open to all, but this community was given somewhat of a priority. With this year’s focus being on women, I’m trying to increase female representation both on and off screen and give them knowledge, hands-on opportunities, experience, and help with script development. Some women also like to work as technicians, say in the lighting department, and the lab is also accommodating of this.

Participating in the lab will give them exposure and that will be valuable when they apply for other labs and even Berlinale Talents in future.

The lab also fosters collaborations. Last time, we had a writer who was very new but whose writing appealed to many. Now, they are working together in writer-director partnerships.

As we hold this programme annually, our alumni will grow year after year, which will provide networking and connection opportunities. They will gain the identity of being a next-generation filmmaker of Sri Lanka. Some will continue their work, others may stop, and yet another group may go in another direction. But their first incubator will be our lab.

You said the first lab focused on underprivileged communities from the up-country. What kind of opportunities did this give this community and what kind of themes did their projects explore?

The lab was started with a Global Media Makers grant, and I was advised to start simple, which is why the first lab focused on script development. We conducted the programme in Tamil, and while some of the participants spoke Tamil, language wasn’t a huge issue. Mentors like Prasanna Vithanage spoke in Sinhala, but I translated it to Tamil, while Visakesa Chandrasekaram spoke in Tamil. We selected 10 participants, but only nine could participate.

I observed that some of these participants were very poor. They couldn’t even afford public transport. If they took a day’s leave, their pay was docked. This put things on hold at home for 2-3 days. That’s how hard things are. So, we paid them an allowance for their participation.

Some participants weren’t granted leave from their jobs. One would do the night shift at her media job and spend the day working at the lab. She did this for the three days we worked together physically. The rest was online.

Our main observation was that life is hard. People struggle to get through each day. So, how can they devote time to make a film? Making a film takes 2-3 months. They can’t set this time aside as their families depend on them. Many are breadwinners.

This lab was also the first time they were appreciated. Many told us that while they may have excelled in school, they now had ordinary 9-5 jobs. No one appreciated their work or talent. They received that appreciation for the first time from this lab.

Thirdly, there was collaboration. People from the South, East, or up-country may speak the same language, but their lifestyle and culture are different. Someone from the East may be unaware of up-country cultural elements. The lab enabled them to sit together, perhaps for the first time, and learn about each other’s cultures.

There was also room for critiquing each other’s work. Sometimes, what we think as good may not be seen in the same way by others. The lab allowed them to sit together and discuss their opinions, helping each other develop their work.

The mentors were also important. Vithanage is popular among Tamil communities. He’s a master and being able to learn from him is quite a big thing. It’s the same with Chandrasekaram. I invited him especially for visual narratives.

Tamil society is a largely verbal society. The visual culture isn’t developed and we have lost this over time. Developing a visual narrative, such as cinema, is thus difficult, because they think in words. To change this, we held a visual narratives class.

We looked at what the participants needed and created programmes accordingly. We developed nine scripts, of which three are now complete.

My biggest hope is to get them all out, like an anthology, but this depends on securing investors. If this happens, however, people from the plantation community or other overlooked communities will have that identity of a filmmaker. That’s a great thing. It’s of value to them to be creators.

Most of us live in Colombo. We can access creative forums. We can visit museums. But people from these communities don’t get these opportunities. The struggle of their day-to-day lives is too great. But with it, their creativity is even greater.

They have some excellent scripts and ideas. I believe they can add more stories and perspectives to Sri Lankan cinema.

The plantation community’s stories should be documented. Due to a lack of education and daily struggles, their folk culture, deity culture, and mythologies are not documented. They can’t write books. It’s difficult. They can’t publish them. So, because of this, that culture is lost.

As an example, during the colonial period, plantation workers weren’t allowed to talk while plucking tea leaves. And so, they would sing. But within these songs, they would share what’s on their mind, gossip, etc. It was like a musical film, and yet, these elements haven’t made it to a film. Now, these communities are modernising because they are discriminated against, based on ethnicity, resulting in them hiding their ethnicity. They change their names, their identities, and their language. We are at the edge of losing our cultural elements.

If we don’t document these stories now, we can’t do it in the future. The main objective of the lab is to tell stories from our roots with authenticity.

Is our cinema industry encouraging, giving emerging filmmakers opportunities?

We get recommendation letters and help with scripts, but mainly it is those with connections that get these opportunities. So there’s a question of if opportunities go to known people or talented people.

If you take production houses, they choose big directors or established names. There is nothing wrong here, as a business would opt to work with people with an established market as opposed to making a loss by giving a newcomer an opportunity.

But emerging filmmakers need to realise that if their work isn’t valued by the market, then they need to establish themselves in a way that gives them value. They need to think about a strategy to achieve this.

I accessed international opportunities because I couldn’t access local opportunities. As a newcomer and as a woman, no one invested in my work. So I looked at how I could take my work forward. My taste was developed by watching international movies. My films are influenced by them. And so, I decided to look at international opportunities and positioned my brand accordingly. It was after that that I was able to target local investors, with whom I am now having discussions.

Young filmmakers need to look at how they can make use of available opportunities. In cultivation, they say that some crops can be planted in certain soils but not others. Identifying this allows us to plant crops better. This applies to filmmakers as well.

It’s often the same few films that get selected to international film festivals. What’s the reason for this? Do emerging filmmakers not get the opportunity?

For the most part, they don’t get the opportunity, mainly because we don’t know how to apply for them. I made this mistake in the past as well. We may take a production better suited for European audiences and apply for an Asian film festival. Or we will take a production better suited for Asian audiences and apply for a European film festival.

Festival standards and requirements are different and there is a specific way of applying. We make a lot of mistakes when applying, as emerging filmmakers. We may not properly submit our work. We may apply at the very last minute. These can hinder our chances. We aren’t properly organised.

One of our biggest shortcomings when making a film is that our stories aren’t diverse. They are similar, from cinematography and storytelling to direction. For instance, Sri Lanka made many conflict-related films. If you take 10 of them, you will see many similarities in style, even though the story itself may be different. But the audience today may have changed, they may not be drawn to these stories.

Our ideologies also need to change. In the past, films that were misogynistic were acceptable. But today, they aren’t. The language used in queer films has changed. We also need to change as our ideologies can impact our opportunities.

Our force isn’t enough. We lack innovative storytelling. Our language is stagnant. We are evolving very slowly.

The narratives of other South Asian countries as well as Asian countries keep evolving, but we lack diversity. These countries have over 200 ethnicities. There is a mixing of stories and experiences. Their problems have changed.

Ours haven’t. We have the same problems and the same people. The same experiences. We don’t think of something new. We don’t have new perspectives. We don’t have new experiences. We are scared to experiment. We are in that safe zone.