Tissa Abeysekara
| Tissa Abeysekara | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
May 7, 1939 Maharagama, Sri Lanka |
| Died | April 18, 2009 (aged 69) Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Nationality | Sri Lankan |
| Other names | Ananda Tissa de Fonseka |
| Education | Dharmapala Vidyalaya |
| Occupation | Film director/writer |
| Political party | Lanka Sama Samaja Party |
| Spouse(s) | Asanka Monarvilla(1988-to date), Sweenethat Weerasighe, Pushpa Meewella, |
| Children | Aparna Nirmohi, Noriko Maduwanthi ,Charulatha Swethambari, Svetlana Kamalocini and Dimitra Abeysekara |
| Awards | Gratiaen Prize, Deshabandu |
Tissa Ananda Abeysekara (7 May 1939 – 18 April 2009) was a Sri Lankan filmmaker, writer, director, producer and political critic.
Tissa Ananda Abeysekera Guneratne de Fonseka was born in Maharagama, a railroad town 12 miles southeast of Colombo to Sir Arthur Solomn de Fonseka and Agnus de Fonseka (Nee Rupesighe)]]. . Tissa's grandfather was Sir Carolis de Fonseka, who was a Mudliar to the British and is the great-grandson of Sir Solomn de Fonseka, who was a Gate Mudliar, although Tissa hails from the House of Greenlands in Havlock town. Tissa's father declared bankruptcy in 1949. Due to poor health, Tissa was not sent to school until age 11. Tutored at home at first, he had his formal education at Dharmapala Vidyalaya.
Abeysekera began his career as a short-story writer, writing in Sinhala, when he was still a schoolboy, and he got some short stories published in the Dinamina and Janatha national newspapers. Barely out of his teens, he published a collection of Sinhala short stories, which received favourable reviews, bringing him praise from Ediriweera Sarachchandra.
A chance meeting with Dr. Lester James Peries in the early 1960s lured him to the cinema, where he remained for the next 40 years. He received co-credit for some Peries films, and the screenplay he wrote for Welikatara launched him on a career as Sri Lanka's foremost screenplay writer. Important screenplays were those for Nidhanaya and Welikathara. In addition, he made over 40 documentaries for the Government Film Unit before breaking through as a feature filmmaker with Karumakkarayo, based on Gunadasa Amarasekara's controversial novel. This was followed by Mahagedara (1983) and Viragaya (1988), based on Martin Wickramasinghe's novel, which was thought unfilmable: Viragaya is considered one of the finest Sinhala films ever made.
In 1996, his novella Bringing Tony Home won the Gratiaen Prize for the best piece of Creative Writing in English by a resident Sri Lankan. He continued writing mostly in English, bringing out another collection of three stories, In My Kingdom of the Sun and the Holy Peak.
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