A leading Pakistani filmmaker has said that the country has extra-ordinary talent in film and music, and National College of Arts (NCA) would do its best to revive film industry. Professor Shireen Pasha, Head of the Department of Film Making at the National College of Arts, Lahore, was delivering lecture at "Pakistan Now Series" at Asia House, here last evening.
Throwing light on struggle of film making in Pakistan, she said the department of film making at NCA has emerged, as a launching pad to the immense talent of film making in Pakistan, as the two films by the first batch of young graduates have bagged thirty-two awards.
She proudly referred to film "Shroud" based on novel by Prem Chand and a film on child garbage collectors produced by the graduates of the NCA's film making department, established by her recently.
In her lecture on evolution of film making in Pakistan, accompanied by clips from significant films, titled "The Reel" she traced the phases of development and retardation of film making in Pakistan from pre-partition time through periods of democracies and martial laws to current scenario. The lecture was third event in "Pakistan Now Series". Ms Pasha said movies like "Khuda Kay Liey" and "Ramchand Pakistani" have definitely raised the hopes and confidence of people in Pakistani cinema, in dormant for the past several years.
She said these films have proved Pakistan's capability to compete internationally in the field of arts. Recalling the phases, film making in Pakistan has gone through, she said that over the six decades of its history film making has seen series of ups and downs yet it has succeeded in maintaining predominant stream of depicting conflict and class struggle and has been able to produce some phenomenal feature films and documentaries that earned international acclaim.
Referring to trends in the evolution of Pakistani films, Pasha pointed out that the strong influence of progressive movement inherited from pre-partition period continued to dominate for quite some time in the early years of Pakistani films. Then with the onset of dictatorial regimes, the progressive and socialist thinking witnessed strong resistance.
The progressives continued to chase their dreams and the film "Jago Hua Savera" written by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and produced by Nauman Taseer in early 60s, that showed the struggle of ordinary people was a big success and surge of progressive dreams. The film won several international awards and repositioned Pakistan cinema, as an agent of change.
The curbs and censorships and dominance of propaganda oriented media badly effected the out put in film making, which resulted in downward trends both in terms of quality and quantity. In 1971 the blockbuster "Basheera" brought phenomenal surge. The character played by Sultan Rahi of fight against all evils met such a success that he was signed for 840 films breaking the world record.
She said another of Rahi's super hit was "Maula Jatt" which led to production of many sequels including "Maula Jatt in London" and all of them did record business. She regretted the fact that Pakistan film industry, which was world's fifth largest in late 60s and early 70s shrunk due to repressive policies of dictatorial regimes where efforts were made to turn media to propaganda machinery rather than given due attention, as an industry.
At the same time she reposed confidence in the young talent of Pakistan saying that it was comparable to talent anywhere in the world provided proper technical facilities are available, a pre-requisite to success in modern film industry.