Abstract:
Compared to traditional art media established in human society, cinema gained rapid popularity among the majority of the young audience, as revealed by related sources. It is not surprising that cinema's ability to present real social issues realistically has provided raw material for the creation of challenges the audience faces. Since the primary audience for cinema, both foreign and local, consists of young people, it seems that things most relevant to them, such as love, break-ups, unemployment, entertainment, harmony, etc., are prominently featured. The purpose of this research is to study how social problems faced by youth have been portrayed in Sinhalese cinema. The research methodology involves comparing how the same social issue has been cinematically explored in the closed Sri Lankan society and the open, liberal society with a gap of three and a half decades. The research problem is to evaluate the impact of unemployment on Sri Lankan youth and how the resulting social tragedy is portrayed in cinematography. Accordingly, Dharmasena Pathiraja's 'Ahas Gawwa' (1974) and Uberto Pasolini's 'Machan' (2008) have been subjected to content analysis. In the data analysis, five profiles related to the youth identified in these works are questioned. These works explain the social problems youth face due to unemployment from two perspectives. They analyze how social conflicts are exacerbated by economic instability and the resulting tragedy of disillusioned youth. In 'Ahas Gawwa,' the problem of unemployment is shown to destroy the hopes of the youth, while in 'Machan,' it is interpreted as a problem that affects various social strata. Accordingly, the disparate characteristics of two filmmakers from two eras in their efforts to express the same social issue through the medium of cinema could be identified here.
