
Short films as a genre have no commercial survival in the cinema industry but they stand as the most viable entry point to aspiring filmmakers.
Short films although are supported through the film festival and film grants sector of the cinema world, do not have vast followings to label them as products that can serve the purpose of ‘entertainment’ to the popular psyche.
At least that can certainly be said when looking at the ‘cinema scene’ in Sri Lanka, where we are yet to see the cinema theatre circuit screen collections of short films to attract cinemagoers to watch as a ‘show’.
A romantic getaway
The ongoing global Covid pandemic has no doubt given many an aspiring filmmaker, ideas about short films that focus on issues that people are currently facing which are specifically pandemic related.
In this article I wish to focus on a short film written and directed by amateur filmmaker Dr. Udan Fernando whose cinematic work ‘A Covid Honeymoon’ offers food for thought about how the pandemic causes friction in the plans of two young lovers and affects their youthful dreams of experiencing love in the context of a romantic getaway.
The film has in its cast of actors, Xavier Kanishka and Antoinette Thilakshini Ratnayake as the couple whose romantic getaway in Singapore gets thwarted by the measures taken by the Government to combat the rising tide of the pandemic. The short film also features Prasad Suriyaarachchi as a Sri Lankan domiciled in Singapore who provides the couple lodging as an ‘informal’ accommodation provider who nevertheless profits from this practice.
In media res
The story unfolds in a nonlinear narrative style and begins ‘in medias res’ which, therefore, introduces the viewer to the developing situation between the two main characters in the middle of their preparation to leave the place that became their capsule of confinement in a foreign land.
But the visual soon changes to the beginning of the couple’s ‘romantic venture’, which is revealed to be actually a ‘premarital honeymoon’ of which they will not publicise any photographic details / evidence, until they have had their wedding.
As the exuberant lovers who are on their secret premarital honeymoon make their way to ‘Hotel Ceylon’ where they have made arrangements for lodging, they come to learn that the establishment is actually an ‘informal’ room renting operation which requires considerable discretion to be observed on the part of the ‘guests’.
An austere room
However due to the delay in the couple’s arrival which is the result of a city tour embarked upon after arrival at the airport in Singapore, the guestroom of ‘Hotel Ceylon’ which had been reserved for the premarital honeymooners, it turns out, has already been given to some other guests; and thus Rashmin and Sanduni have no option but to accept the offer of staying in the ‘spare room’ at a discounted rate.
The sparseness of space is what hits them the moment they enter the corner room which they are to occupy during their romantic getaway. A room with no bed but simply a mattress on the floor. But despite the austerity that stares them in the face, the two lovebirds decide their desires cannot be doused and thus make the most of it.
However, the next development of events shows how the decisions of the state set in motion effects that begin to grip Rashmin and Sanduni who are faced with more than what they bargained for in terms of constant closeness. And on top of that is the pressing issue of payment for the ‘overstay’.
Director’s disclosure
A short film with a running time of approximately 21 minutes, this film which has just three actors, provides what can be called a ‘creative rendition’ of a story said to be based on true accounts.
The testimony to this story basis comes at the end where the director’s ‘disclosure’ about the inspiration behind this story is revealed as a text on screen, which I have reproduced here verbatim.
“Having stayed in Singapore for three months due to the closure of airports during the Covid–19 lockdown, the director Udan Fernando, finally finds a seat in a special repatriation flight to Colombo.
On the eve of his departure, he hears a story that hits him like a virus.
It is this story that preoccupies him throughout his two week quarantine term at a Government centre run by the military in a remote area in Eastern Sri Lanka.
Amidst the constant chatter of the fellow quarantine-mates in a small dormitory, the many upheavals at the quarantine centre and the grim circumstances facing him, the director seeks refuge in a corner bed that becomes his working, thinking and dining space.
It is in this corner bed that he writes his script based on the story that he heard before his departure. A Covid Honeymoon – a film born out of a situation of overlapping crises.”
Available for online viewing, on YouTube, titled as “A Covid Honeymoon.
A short feature film | by Udan Fernando” this short film provides what can be called a creative chronicling in the medium of cinema, of a story, that can be marked as belonging to the era of Covid–19.
Seeing as how there is a plethora of stories out there related to the manifold factors of the ongoing pandemic, perhaps there will be, in time to come, a body of cinematic works which may even form a subgenre of cinema all of its own, as ‘covid era cinema’.