Sheersha Perera

BRIEF BIO

Sheersha Perera (NTU) graduated from her practice-led/practice-based PhD examining the taboo of menstruation in contemporary Sri Lankan cinema through RMIT University in Melbourne. She is currently completing postproduction on her feature-length hybrid documentary Big Girl, a film formed from autoethnographic life experience and her passion for Sri Lankan cinema.

As a precursor to Big Girl, Sheersha’s first hybrid short film She (2004) explored many themes relating to Big Girl (such as sexuality and cultural identity). She (2004) screened at the St Kilda Film Festival, Festival Cinemazonia, Festival Du Film De Dieppe and won a merit award at the French Film Festival in Sri Lanka.

Sheersha is a practice-led/practice-based film academic who teaches film at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

CURRENT PROJECTS

While finishing her hybrid documentary on Sri Lankan menstrual rituals, Sheersha is also writing her chapter Creating/Recreating Memory: Cultural Menstruation Rituals through the Making of the Hybrid Documentary ‘Big Girl’ for the book Constructions of the Real: Intersections of Practice and Theory in Documentary-Based Filmmaking.

This chapter outlines the knowledge gained through creative practice research for Big Girl. The film recreates fuses fiction and nonfiction to celebrate and expose the horrors of becoming a Big Girl from the perspective of a twelve-year-old girl adjusting to physical, emotional and social change. The risks of questioning such traditions expose her personal experience within the conservatism of Sri Lanka. The chapter also addresses the complexities of working with the ‘taboo of menstruation’ for the screen from the standpoint of a Sri Lankan diasporic female filmmaker. As such, deeper discussion of this female interpretation can be heard and examined.

She is also currently revising her PhD dissertation Big Girl: The Taboo of Menstruation in Contemporary Sri Lankan Cinema for book publication.

FUTURE PROJECTS

Sheersha is also working on four creative practice projects, three of them focusing on the Asian Sub-continent:

The Sounds of Menstruation

An interdisciplinary project working within medical humanities research that combines film, sound and photography to create a hybrid documentary focusing on women talking about the taboo of menstruation: what can be said and what cannot be said? What words do women associate with menstruation? What thoughts and what colours? What sounds and what textures and what does this all mean? Research generated through interviews and discussions will be used in writing two journal articles and creating a further hybrid documentary feature.

Exploring Food and Superstitions in Sri Lanka

This project examines how patriarchy uses food to contain and control the Asian girl child. Travelling by train from the north to south Sri Lanka, four women from contrasting ethnic Sri Lankan communities (Burgher, Muslim, Sinhala and Tamil), talk to the people from different regions about food and superstition. They test the food and may even test the superstitions. The vocal backdrop this journey involves finding historical and contemporary writings about food and superstition from every place they pass through. The literature from specific areas on food and superstition drives the interviews and discussions with locals. The four women read from it and get the local experts to add commentary. The research generated from interviews, discussions and previous academic knowledge for this project will be used in writing several journal articles and creating a hybrid documentary feature.

Tracing and Retracing the Women of Sri Lankan film

An ongoing transmedia project on Sri Lankan women in film. The focus of this project is to interview Sri Lankan women filmmakers (local and diasporic). Research from these interviews will be used in several ways: It will focus on developing a collection of articles for suitable journals about Sri Lankan women filmmakers and their practice. A feature length documentary, a website that hosts short documentaries about these women filmmakers and their practice and it will also host an ongoing portal to archive oral histories – with these women filmmakers and about these women filmmakers.

This project aims to seek partnership with the Sri Lankan Film corporation, the University of the Visual and Performing Arts in Colombo (Sri Lanka), The American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (USA), International Centre for Ethnic Studies(Sri Lanka), and The Centre for Women’s Research (Sri Lanka) .

Asian Women in Film

An ongoing transmedia project on Asian women in film. The focus is to interview local and diasporic Asian women filmmakers. Research from these interviews will be used in several ways: It will focus on developing a collection of articles for suitable journals about Asian women filmmakers and their practice. A feature length documentary, a website that hosts short documentaries about these women filmmakers and their practice and this website will also host an ongoing portal to archive oral histories – with and about these women filmmakers.

This project seeks partnership with the Asia Research Institute, Asian Cinema Research Lab, Asian Film Archive, Objectifs, Centre for Photography and Film, Asian Society, Asian Film Academy (South Korea), Asia- Europe Foundation, The Asian Film and Media Initiative (NYU-TISCH).

Conference Papers

Perera S. & Dixon I. (2019) ‘Immoral Spectacle: Revisioning and Invisiblisation in Sri Lankan Female Puberty Rituals through Film’. College English Association, 28-30 March. New Orleans, Louisia