International Conference on Sri Lanka Studies (ICSLS)

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King in his subject’s cloths: Anti-colonialist characters in post colonial western cinema explored through Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and Cry Freedom
(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Fonseka, P.
Colonization has brought about effects that have had lasting impacts on all colonized spaces, may they be geographical, economic or cultural. In this paper my attempt is to explore how post independent cinema of Richard Attenborough tries to portray anticolonialist heroes in terms of western cinematographic tools, which his prospective audiences of the west were familiar with. These apparently contradictory entities, i.e. native protects and its leaders redressed to the taste of the very populace once they struggled against in a desperate attempts to reclaim their independence, are marked by a mockery of independence itself. At a superficial level, this become almost evidence in the selection of the main actor of both films, British Ben Kingsly (as Gandhi) and American Denzil Washington (as Steve Biko) in Gandhi and in Cry Freedam respectively. What these western actors dressed in the native cloths, how ever successful they were in their performance, seem to be authenticating by revisiting colonial space, is in fact a reversed form of colonialism that appropriate the ex-rival into the colonial realm itself. In exploration of such thesis, I will seek theoretical support in critical theory in general and post colonial theory of representation and theory of film in particular.