Having already screened in New York City and Seattle in 2006, Sujewa Ekanayake’s film Date Number One, featuring a number of the District’s indie film actors, will have its first weeklong run in Kensington, Maryland this month. Comprised of five different stories, all about first dates, the film has been described as “about as charming as they come,” by Michael Tully, a SXSW film festival selected filmmaker, who continued on to say Date Number One “presents a world in which cultures don’t clash, they mesh.” Chuck Tryon, a media professor, treaded along this tangent as well, writing that the 30-somethings’ search for love in Ekanayake’s film “might be understood as the anti-Crash depiction of life in the city.”

When asked about the comfortably multi-cultural aspect of his film, Ekanayake responded, “[That] aspect of the film is taken from my real life experience.  From my birth in Sri Lanka until now, I’ve lived in areas of Maryland, Chicago, and DC with many different types of people and by and large these people get along well. I find the Montgomery County and northwest DC areas to be well integrated and very comfortable areas to live in, regardless of race, ethnic background, whatever. Only insane people want to maintain perpetual ethnic conflict in a place, and those people are in the minority. Others will grow tired of it after a while and put an end to it.”

Date Number One has received a steady flow of positive reviews, nearly 90% according the Ekanayake. “Positive reactions to the movie are encouraging, I ignore the negative reactions.” After inquiring into whether these reviews will affect his future projects, the director answered, “Regardless of how any one project does, there will always be other projects in the future. I am working on nine feature scripts to be shot over the next three years or so, at the moment.”

With Ekanayake’s film returning to the area it was created, I asked the director how he entered into the District’s independent film scene.

“Independent film attracts highly individualistic people who probably would be pretty frustrated in the Hollywood-type system or any prohibitive, limiting community, at least during the early phases of their careers. Initially I worked on a few film and video projects in the DC area & got to know people. Groups such as Women In Film & Video, DC Film Salon, and others do a good job of maintaining a filmmaking community in the DC area. I find the stong indie/punk rock history in the DC area, with Dischord Records and so on, to be a motivating and supporting factor for my film work here.”

Date Number One
Thu July 12 - Wed July 18, 2007
Armory Building
3710 Mitchell Street
Kensington, MD 20895
7:30 PM daily
$7
www.wilddiner.com/