Arnestad’s ‘Silenced Voices’ documentary gains momentum
[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 September 2012, 14:27 GMT]Even as the GoSL tightens its vice through different means to gag democratic voices in the island from expressing the truth about the genocide of the Eezham Tamils, award-winning Norwegian documentary filmmaker Beate Arnestad’s ‘Silenced Voices - Tales of Sri Lankan Journalists in Exile’ has been steadily gaining momentum at acclaimed film festivals and screenings across the world, exposing the truth about media repression by the Sri Lankan state. After a grand pre-première in Oslo in February 2012, a world premiere in Hague at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in March, screenings at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York in June, Arnestad’s documentary received a salubrious welcome at public screenings in Australia this week.
Ms. Arnestad, who has over twenty years of experience producing and directing content for departments at Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, was most known for her first independent and award- winning documentary ‘My Daughter the Terrorist’ (2007) that was focussed on the Black Tigers. The pre-première screening of her latest documentary ‘Silenced Voices’ to a jam-packed hall in Oslo on February 2012 gave viewers a powerful account of the situation of media freedom in a militarized state and the numerous personal and political hurdles that committed journalists from the island had to surpass to bring out the truth to the world. The commitment to ethical journalism shown by Bashana Abeywardane, former editor of Hiru weekly, his wife Sharmila Logeswaram, Sonali Samarasinghe, the wife of slain journalist Lasantha Wikrematunge, and A. Lokeesan, TamilNet’s Vanni wartime correspondent, were poignantly shown in the documentary which also featured the escape of Lokeesan to Norway.
