Wimal Dissanayake

Wimal Dissanayake (born 1939) is a Sri Lankan writer, lecturer, and scholar of Asian cinema and Asian communication theory.^[1]

Dissanayake is from Nikaveva, a village about 35 kilometers away from Kurunegala town. Both his parents were school teachers. He attended high school at Trinity College, Kandy.^[2] He studied under dramatist Ediriweera Sarachchandra.^[2]

Dissanayake graduated from the University of Peradeniya with a Bachelor of Arts degree upon graduating from the university, which merged while he was there with the University of Ceylon.^[2] He then obtained an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania^[2] and a Ph.D from the University of Cambridge. He received Fulbright and Rockefeller Fellowships. He then became Wei Lun Distinguished Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.^[3]

He criticised the wholesale adoption of Western-based communication theory, research, and methodologies.^[4][5][6] He studied the perspective and mindset of Asians in communication studies.^[1] He developed Asian communication theories through studying classical Asian teachings, cultural ritual traditions, beliefs and norms.^[2] He was also considered as a pioneer of having introduced postmodernism literary theory for the benefit of Sinhalese readers. He began publishing content about postmodernism theory through Sinhala newspapers during the 1990s.^[2]

He co-authored a book titled, Profiling Sri Lankan Cinema along with Ashley Ratnavibhushana and it was published in 2000.^[7][8] Profiling Sri Lankan Cinema was focused at analyzing the growth trajectory of the Sri Lankan cinema.^[9] He along with K. Moti Gokulsing, published Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural Change (2004), based on the nine decades of Indian cinema, which had seen its own fair share of lows and highs.^[10] The book also examines the impact of Indian popular cinema on the people of India as well as on the Indian diaspora community and also reviews how Indian cinema captured the attention of the international community.^[11][12] Both Wimal and Gokulsing figured out six major influences that have shaped Indian popular cinema when publishing Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural Change.^[13]

Majority of his English scholarly books were published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Minnesota, Indiana, Routledge, Duke and Penguin Books. Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time (2003),^[14] Raj Kapoor's Films: Harmony of Discourses (1988),^[15] Sinhala Novel and the Public Sphere (2009),^[16] Self and Colonial Desire: Travel Writings of V. S. Naipaul (1993)^[17][18] and Sholay, A Cultural Reading (1992) are regarded as some of his most notable works in English.^[19] He is also known to have maintained a very close association with the Hawaii International Film Festival ever since its inception in 1981, and the longstanding association was ended in 1995 after 14 years.^[2] He also served as the professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Hong Kong.^[2] He also served as a professor at the University of Hawaiʻi and also worked as an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong.^[9]

Dissanayake received the Sahithya Rathna Award from the Government of Sri Lanka at the 2012 State Literary Festival.^[20] He was conferred with an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Kelaniya.^[20] He was conferred with the prestigious Deshabandu title during the 2019 Sri Lankan national honours.^[21][22]

On 4 December 2021, he was conferred with the Asian Communication Award for Disruptive Inquiry at the 2021 AMIC Asia Communication Awards, and he was honored with the award from the AMIC Asian Media Information and Communication Center.^[1][2] He received the Asian Communication Award in the virtual edition of the 28th AMIC Annual Conference, where the winners of the 2021 AMIC Asia Communication Awards were officially announced.^[1][2][23]