Berty Seneviratne
Sri Lankan filmmaker and actor (1916–1967)
Berty Seneviratne (16 September 1916 – 22 February 1967 බර්ටි සෙනෙවිරත්න), popularly known by stage name Shanthi Kumar was an actor, filmmaker and choreographer in Sri Lankan cinema. Considered one of the three pioneer film directors in Sinhala cinema, he made the first talkie film of Sri Lankan film history. He has gone down in history as a dancer who amazed India and was honored by an Indian governor.
Personal life
Berty Seneviratne alias Shanthi Kumar Seneviratne was born on September 16, 1916, at the Lihinigiri Palace in Kurunegala, Sri Lanka. His mother was from Subasinghe family of Sandalankawa. He studied as Trinity College, Kandy, and mastered wrestling, rugby and football during school period. Berty's younger brother Richard Herbert alias Herbie Seneviratne was also a popular actor in early Sinhala cinema.
He died on 22 February 1967 at the age of 50.
Career
He later studied English and Latin and went to India to learn dance from popular choreographer Gopinath. During his life in India, he learned Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Urdu, Malayalam, Telugu and Bengali.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Berty Seneviratne” as sri Lankan filmmaker and actor (1916–1967). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as sri Lankan filmmaker and actor (1916–1967). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q105544137. The first chronological checks are 1916 and 1967.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Berty Seneviratne” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.