Pakistani Cinemas New Wave

KARACHI, Pakistan After years of economic

doldrums and creative drought, Pakistani movies
are pulling in crowds at home and garnering awards
at international film festivals. Its a miraculous
restart for an industry that has seen more highs and
lows than a three-hour Bollywood blockbuster.
Taking the power of storytelling into their own
hands, Pakistani filmmakers are fashioning muchneeded, nuanced portraits of their country and
cultivating a degree of national pride that hasnt
been felt for a long time.

In 2012, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoys Saving Face,

about victims of acid attacks in Pakistan, earned the
country its first Academy Award, in the best short
documentary category. For local film buffs, the win
was a harbinger of good things to come. In
preparation for this years Oscars, for the first time
in half a century Pakistan submitted a film for

consideration in the best foreign-language film

category. While the entry, Zinda Bhaag (Run For
Your Life), failed to make the short list for
nomination, the very fact that we could select a
movie that would represent us at the Oscars makes
us proud, says Ms. Obaid-Chinoy. The director
believes that 2013 will go down in history as the
year that Pakistani cinema was reborn.

Pakistani cinema thrived in the 1960s, with political

and romantic films like Bombay-Wallah (1961),
Shaheed (Martyr, 1962) and Armaan
(Desire, 1966), featuring the screen legends
Waheed Murad, Nadeem Baig and the actress
Shabnam, among others. It survived the IndoPakistani War of 1971, and went on to peak in the
early 1970s with classics like Umrao Jaan Ada
(The Courtesan of Lucknow, 1972) and Aina
(The Mirror, 1977).

At the height of the glory days, by conservative

estimates, Pakistani studios released more than 100
films a year and some 700 cinemas were operating.

In the 1980s, Mohammad Zia ul-Haqs military

dictatorship censored any films that tried to address
weighty issues. That decades ultraconservative
mores discouraged the participation of talented
Pakistanis, especially women. The collapse was
swift: Lollywood, Pakistans affectionate
nickname for its Lahore-based film industry,
churned out tasteless films replete with violence,
choreographed disco numbers, melodramatic
plotlines and poor acting. By the end of the 1990s,
production had slowed to about 50 films each year.
Hundreds of cinemas across the country were torn
down.

In 2006, Pervez Musharraf, as president, began to

ease restrictions on the importation of Indian films,
which had been banned in Pakistan since the war
between the countries in 1965. The newly available
Bollywood productions drew so many viewers that
multiplexes were built to meet the demand. The
new capacity, in turn, gave a new generation of
Pakistanis, either trained abroad or already working
in television and advertising, an incentive to start
making movies of their own. With advances in
digital filmmaking permitting lower budgets and an
audience already exposed to high-quality
international cinema, Pakistanis began to produce
bold works.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading

the main storyContinue reading the main story
Eight years later, high import taxes on equipment
and lack of government support still impede
industry growth, and financial investment by

wealthy producers remains difficult to find. But Ms.

Obaid-Chinoy is optimistic. The approximately 100
cinemas now operating in Pakistan (for a population
of over 180 million) are more than Ive seen in my
entire life, she says.

Tired of the one-dimensionality of the portrayal of

Pakistanis on Western screens (as terrorists,
bombers, victims or collaborators), independent
Pakistani filmmakers are telling other, more
sophisticated, stories.

With more than 20 films released in 2013,

production is rising. One of last years releases,
Main Hoon Shahid Afridi (I Am Shahid Afridi),
about a small-time cricket league in the
northeastern city of Sialkot, sends a powerful
message of religious tolerance. Josh (Against the
Grain), in which an upper-class woman investigates

the kidnapping of her maid, imagines a world where

social justice isnt beyond the reach of the poor. In
the deceptively quiet Lamha (Seedlings), the
son of a wealthy couple is accidentally killed by a
rickshaw driver. The film looks evenhandedly and
with compassion at the different griefs suffered by
the couple and the driver.

Zinda Bhaag, the countrys 2014 Oscar entry, pays

loving tribute to Lahore and 1970s Lollywood. The
directors, Meenu Gaur and Farjad Nabi, enlisted
real Lahoris in the depiction of the grim realities
faced by Pakistanis who attempt to escape
economic hardship through illegal emigration.
Equally unconventional were decisions to cast the
Bollywood legend Naseeruddin Shah in a lead role,
and to take postproduction to India instead of
Malaysia or Thailand. These fresh approaches augur
well for greater Indo-Pakistani cooperation, and

have jump-started an industry declared all but dead

a few years ago.

Last year, Lollywood, too, stepped up its game. In

Waar (Strike), an English-language thriller
inspired by the 2009 Taliban attack on a police
training center near Lahore, Pakistan is rived by the
pressures of the war on terror. The films
unabashed patriotism attracted huge audiences
nationwide. Waar, which was Pakistans first bigbudget film, earned some $1.9 million in just over
one month, making it also the countrys highestgrossing film to date. Its success signals the
eagerness of Pakistanis to discuss terrorism on their
own terms. We want to have the right to represent
and choose our own narrative, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy
says, rather than a narrative that is imposed on
us.

Gloria Steinem has said that every social justice

movement that I know of started with people
telling their life stories. By this formulation,
Pakistani cinemas new wave hints at a country on
the cusp of a major shift. Each film is at once a
window into a dynamic country going through
difficult times, and a blueprint for how its people
might find their way to better days ahead.

Bina Shah is the author of several novels, including

Slum Child, and short-story collections.