Locally produced bad films

June 19, 2005


By Amar Jaleel

If we’re to improve the standard of our film industry, Indian films have to be imported

A Senate Standing Committee sat recently and discussed the matters pertaining to the Pakistan film industry with the film-makers and cinema owners. The five-member committee consisted of Senators Zafar Iqbal, Dr Nighat Agha, Murad Ali Shah, Envar Baig, and Dr Kauser Firdaus. I have no idea if they ever were associated with arts, performing arts, and cinematography in the country or abroad. Watching movies, owning a cinema house, turning off and on the television sets, enjoying choreographic performances privately or in public can hardly establish your expertise in arts and performing arts, and cinematography. The world of arts has its own parameters. Without your intimate acquaintance with the world of arts, I am afraid your concern about the plight of the performing arts and cinematography in Pakistan would turn out to be a casual concern of an outsider.

The nature of their queries betrayed the senators’ utter lack of familiarity with the pathetic condition of the performing arts and cinematography in the country. None of the members had an insight into the catastrophic collapse of cinema culture in the country. Most hackneyed suggestion came from Senator Murad Ali Shah. His emphasis was on developing our film industry on the Iranian film pattern and trends because religious and cultural traditions of India and Pakistan are totally different. One wonders in what way cultural traditions of the Pakistanis and the Iranians are similar?

Pakistan is not a theocratic state. For that matter there is no theocratic Islamic state in the world. Saudi Arabia is an unadulterated monarchy, and Islam doesn’t approve of kingship. Had Pakistan been even remotely a theocratic state the politicians and the clergy instead of raising the uniform issue would have cornered General Pervez Musharraf for putting on an Islamic dress. But then, is Jinnah cap an Islamic headgear? Is shalwar-qameez an Islamic dress? Shalwar-qameez is our national dress. Would any Pakistani leader like Iranian leaders dine and mingle with European and American leadership wearing shalwar-qameez? There is a basic difference between Iranian leadership and Pakistani leadership. Iranian leaders are akin to their masses, whereas Pakistani leaders contemptuously keep the masses at bay. How can you call a country an Islamic state where rulers reap the harvest and the people lick their wounds in abject poverty.

Islam is a universal religion. As it encompasses people and places all over the world, it doesn’t eradicate local customs and traditions not contrary to the teachings of Islam. Therefore, as you travel across the globe you will come across Indonesian Islamic culture, Malaysian Islamic culture, Iranian Islamic culture, Indian Islamic culture, Pakistani Islamic culture, Turkish Islamic culture, Egyptian Islamic culture, and many more. There is neither a universal Islamic dress, nor a headgear. Only a few decades ago we were a part of Indian Islamic culture. We had lived in one huge country, India, for centuries. After the division of India on our insistence, and coming into being of Pakistan in 1947, the same pre-partition culture of undivided India persisted with us. Barring the alphabets we speak the same language that the majority of the Indians speak. We call it Urdu and they call it Hindi. For us in pre-partition Karachi it bore one name, Hindustani. Except religious scriptures the entire literary and artistic legacy in the subcontinent is common heritage between India and Pakistan. You can’t partition Ghalib, Meer, Kabeer, and Tagore. You can’t bifurcate Taj Mahal. Our music, our folklore, our songs are the same. Culturally, we do not have anything common with our brothers in faith, the Iranians, Egyptians, and the Arabs. We neither dress up like them nor speak their language.

If you are seriously thinking of reviving cinema culture in the country you will have to import Indian films like any other item. You will have to reconcile to the fact that Indian film Industry stands almost on a par with Hollywood. Is there any harm if we learnt the art of movie-making from the Indians? On the strength of a few films produced annually by our Lahore film industry no investor would risk his capital in the construction of cinema houses.

Prior to the banning of Indian movies in 1962 there were about two thousand cinema houses in the country. The government blatantly ignored the annual output of the local film industry. The cinema houses starved for business, and finally collapsed. After Afghanistan we are the poorest country in having meagre cinema houses in this part of the world.

The senators turned a deaf ear to the disclosure that evil elements export locally made porn films to India in substantive number. The tremors ought to have shaken the country in shame when film-maker Salman Pirzada informed the senators that no less than 275,000 X-rated porn films of short duration made in Pakistan were sent to India recently. Isn’t it an outrageously staggering figure? Nothing happened. Reportedly no senator took a serious note of it. No queries were made to unearth the elements involved in the heinous crime. One honourable senator expressed his keen desire for watching the porn films. Chairman of the Standing Committee Senator Zafar Iqbal assured him that copies of X-rated films would be made available to him for his viewing.