Sumitra Peries

Kala Keerthi Sumitra Peries (24 March 1935 – 19 January 2023) was a Sri Lankan filmmaker. She was the first female film director from Sri Lanka, and was known as the "Poetess of Sinhala Cinema". She also held the post of Sri Lanka's ambassador to France, Spain and the United Nations in the late 1990s. Of her films the more popular ones are Gehenu Lamai, Ganga Addara and Yahaluvo. She was married to the most prolific Sri Lankan film director Dr. Lester James Peries. Early life Born Sumitra Gunawardena, on 24 March 1935 to a Marxist family known as the "Boralugoda Gunewardene's" in Avissawella. Her father, Henry (better known as Harry) Gunawardena was a proctor in Avissawella, and brother of the famous politicians Philip Gunawardena and Robert Gunawardena and her mother, Harriette Wickramasinghe was from a middle-class family. Three of Sumitra's relatives, Dinesh Gunawardena, Gitanjana Gunawardena and Prasanna Gunawardena, are current politicians in Sri Lankan. When Sumitra was just 14 years of age, her mother died. At that time her brother Gamini was five years older and her sister Chandralatha, three years older. She also has a younger brother Ranjith. After the tragedy of their mother's death, Gamini went to the south of France and lived in a yacht with a French painter. Education Peries began her education in Avissawella, then later enrolled to Visakha Vidyalaya in Colombo and finally joined the Aquinas College Colombo to do the London Advanced Level. At the age of 20 Sumitra managed to find some money and travelled to Europe by ship to meet her elder brother Gamini. She was to build her own career there, although she didn't know it at the time. Peries studied filmmaking at the London School of Film Technique and was awarded a Diploma in Film Direction and Production (1957–1959). She was the only woman studying this subject there at that time. After passing out, she began working at Mai Harris, a subtitling firm for a short period and later returned home to Sri Lanka. It was briefly before she left that she happened to meet her to-be-husband at the residence of Vernon Mendis, who was a mutual friend of Lester and Sumitra.