Sri Lanka has best movie locales: Journal

Washington: Sri Lanka has "great locations for filming", says The Location Guide, the film industry`s bible for selectig movie and commercial production locales.

The latest edition has a separate focus on Sri Lanka, showing the island`s natural beauty, a film-friendly government and its reasonable production costs. Sri Lanka`s wildlife parks, tea plantations, miles of pristine beaches and the colonial architecture too were highlighted. The country has an impressive history of filmmaking. It was the setting for such movies as "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", "Jungle Book" and "Tarzan the Ape Man". "Dubbed the pearl of the Indian Ocean, my feeling is that Sri Lanka deserves this title and there is no question that it has great locations for filming and excellent production values with crew rates which would have to be considered the most competitive in the region," wrote Murray Ashton, founder of the London-based The Location Guide. The Guide noted that 300 commercials were filmed in Sri Lanka in 2009, the year the military crushed the Tamil Tigers. "The production community is also made of around 700 film professionals working across all production categories," the guide stated. Sri Lanka recently established a 235-acre tele-cinema studio facility. IANS