Kannan Arunasalam

Documentary Filmmaker

Lecture, Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg, Lecture Series 2022: The Making of Three Films, 28 July 2022


Kannan’s lecture will cover his practice over the last ten years as a documentary filmmaker. Self-taught, he came to filmmaking by accident having worked for several years as a media and human rights lawyer in London. A visit to his hometown of Jaffna, compelled him to tell stories about his native Sri Lanka. The lecture will describe his motivation for making his films, the different approaches he has adopted and the political and social contexts from which the work has emerged. He will focus on three films in particular: “Kerosene” (Prism Prize for best documentary short, Seattle Asian International Documentary festival, 2010), ‘The Tent’ (solo exhibition at The Tetley, United Kingdom, February—May 2019), and his most recent film ‘Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife’ (2022)”