Ismene and Antigone in Sri Lanka's Black Cinema

In Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone is thrust into a volatile public sphere as a figure of resistance to state authority, while her sister, Ismene, is contained within the limits of the private domain. ¹ The resultant contest between kinship and the state produces a social crisis. Yet, in the Black Cinema of Sri Lanka, such boundaries between public and private space have become irrevocably blurred by the cooption of women into institutionalized violence, whether as members of state military forces or of the various extremist and separatist mobilizations and suicide squads. These changes, intrinsic to the struggle for territorial self-determination, underwrite nationalist struggles over urban territory, converting women into radical agents of change. The domestic sphere, associated with indigeneity and ethnic belonging, is destabilized. Whereas the cinema of the postcolonial period subscribed to the fledgling nation-state, twenty-first century productions question political authority.