I think we already have a thread on this, but I say some good articles on this.. So thought I should post.
Written and directed by Shahid Nawaz, the same guy who did Daira, Boltle Gali is about a bootlegger and his product… The story takes place in Karachi and actually is seen through the eye’s of the bottle as it goes from one to next…
Nawaz calls the brand “Dantes Vodka,” refering to the seven levels of hell… Similar to the levels through which the bottle passes.. Eventually he ties up all the story lines into one.
The Bottle is the message
By our correspondent
KARACHI: Call it the city of lights or melting pot of Pakistan but actor-director Shahzad Nawaz has described Karachi not as a city but a lane or alley in his second art film Botal Gali, which was premiered with much fanfare here on Friday evening at the Arts Council.
The event was quite an affair by its design. The red carpet was rolled out for everybody to walk in the best theatre house of the city. Seeing poster and souvenir, it all appeared a perfectly packaged dose of what could be called ‘frank entertainment’.
For most people, Botal Gali was much talked about work by Shahzad Nawaz but nobody including some of the cast like Rashid Farooqi had an inkling of what it held for the audience. “Like you, I am also here to see what the film is all about,” he remarked before the premiere. “I know nothing beyond my bits of acting.”
“For Kevin Costner, it was Message in a Bottle but for Shahzad Nawaz the bottle has become the message,” remarked one of the viewers at the end of film screening. “It is about entrenched middle-class and superfluous elite of the city. If Karachi was a genie then it had been very well made captive of Botal Gali.”
In his keynote address, playwright Dr Anwar Sajjad hailed Shahzad Nawaz for his remarkable achievement aptly described as Botal Gali. “I recall my own youth (while) seeing him,” he told an almost auditorium-packed crowd. “I think he is a tall Anwar Sajjad.”
According to Dr Sajjad, leafing through the script of Botal Gali was all pleasure. He said art requires command over the craft whereas almost every piece of art is fabricated. “And your art is not to let fabrication drip from your work.”
The story of Botal Gali, also penned by Shahzad Nawaz, is indeed a very gripping one. You may call it a bottle-opening affair, which unravels the both sides of the bridge divide of Karachi. The writer deals with the cast remarkably well having them either drowned in the goblet or indulged in bootlegging.
Dr Sajjad believed the contemporary art works miserably lack the seamless craft which actually elevates the piece of art to its genuine pedestal. He accentuated the need of acquiring command over the craft to create art. “Don’t let your viewers feel your part of fabrication.”
He said the story of Botal Gali is all about insulted and frightened people, who are great in numbers. “People of lost destiny are captive of this bottle,” he added. “And if their internal pressure was able to blow up its cork, their destiny would glow.”
Dr Sajjad praised Shahzad Nawaz for his three years’ labour to put up another art film after adapting Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke for his debut tele-film Daira.
“Attached to his personal glamour, his artistic journey has proceeded a bit farther.”
Co-producer of Botal Gali, Humanyun Saeed, appreciated Shahzad for working zealously most of the time. He said it was perhaps the first time he did not find much room to contribute to the project. “It was just because of Shahzad who lost himself to the project, especially for last 6 months