Please feel free to add the films from Pak you’re looking forward to…
Right now, **Ramchand Pakistani **is on my lollywood-radar. It will probably be releasing in July.
Also, Khullay Asman Ke Neeche will get released after about a decade in the making…hehe…Javed Sheikh sure took his time with this one!
Re: Pakistani films to look forward to
So Ramchand has only been screened at Tribeca and is not up in Pakistani theatres yet?
Interestingly, various sites online are reporting Pyar Kabhi Na Karna (I don't quite know if I got the title right; I could be mixing it up with one of the many hundreds of bollywood movies with titles also containing "Pyar", "Kabhi", "Karna" or some mix of the above) is already released and in theatres in Pakistan. Yet when I look on the website of Cinepax, a cinema company in Pakistan, its still listed under "upcoming".
I feel that Pakistan is going to continue to be the 1-2 movies per year industry, if that. I was expecting much to change suddenly with the release of Khuda ke Liye, and even more activity to spark up when Indian movies began being released in Pakistan, yet I fear that Pakistanis are once again too complacent and find it easier enjoying entertainment produced outside their country than to bother jump starting a dying industry.
Furthermore, unprofessionalism is still the special of the week with these guys. Javed Sheikh keeps announcing vague dates, and then doesn't live up to releasing the movie. Is he afraid of the competition? Most likely. If you were a bollywood diehard, as most Pakistanis tend to be, would you want to see this Javed Sheikh flick or something/anything with Aishwarya?
Javed Sheikh is being completely unprofessional, and his attitude of putting off the release of his movie is just going to hurt him in the end. I believe he made some announcement recently of a date, and I hope for his sake, he sticks to it.
Sameena Peerzada, on a television forum on the state of the Pakistani film industry, claimed she's about to make another movie, but no other news has surfaced on the issue. Maybe it hasn't materialized out of her mind yet.
Saqib Malik's film, of which its been so long that I've forgotten the name of it, has appeared to have been shelved. Jami wishes to make a film as well, but no details on when, where, or how. After Khuda Ke Liye's success, Shohaib Mansoor wants to move onto his next movie, but no news on anything yet there either. Shohaib is losing muchos dineros on folks bootlegging his movie on the internet - you can watch it for free on youtube, and you would think he'd have the sense to contact youtube, and get those clips removed. You'd also think the DVD would be more available at this point outside Pakistan - available in most big metropolitan areas. People here, as usual, give me a quizzical look when I ask them about any Pakistani movie, including Khuda Ke Liye, despite its well-touted Indian release.
Is the Pakistani film industry coming out of its doldrums? Until someone comes along and has some economic genius on how to propel a dying industry out of the crater it made for itself with over a decade of unprofessional and absurd behavior, I am afraid that all we can hope for is at best 1 or 2 movies a year, and that too produced at great personal cost, as what we've seen happen with both Ramchand and Khuda Ke Liye.
Re: Pakistani films to look forward to
I seriously wish Javed Sheikh would make a non-thumkaa, *non-I-so-want-it-to-be-like-Bollywood film. Why can't he just make a simple, **urban* Pakistani film, be that a love story or whatever. For that matter, why can't any of these directors do that?
Syed Noor showed so much promise with Sargam in particular, but unfortunately those kinds of films didn't offer him much financial rewards, which is really what they r in showbiz for. Now he's onto *Majajan*s and God knows what kind of Punjabi-Saima-films.
Samina Peerzada is all talk, I'm sorry. After Inteha, she shouldn't have had much trouble finding a producer. I think she just ran out of steam after making that film. Shararat was more of a shararat on the unsuspecting audience that was expecting another masterpiece from Peerzada.
Saqib Malik, Jami, Amena and Marina Khan are pretty much what I'm pinning my hopes on now. Shoaib Mansoor makes a film after every ice-age so you can not count on him. To make an industry you need the right kind of a group of film making professionals the kinds of which Lahore does not have yet. It can start anywhere in Pakistan, but you have to have that group of people with a vision. I hope we get one going soon.
How ironic…the Indian media is far more supportive and interested in Pakistani film makers than any local newspaper or media outlet. Here’s a very nice article culled from the Times of India…
Pak directors try out new genres-India-The Times of India
NEW DELHI: When film director Omar Ali Khan wanted artificial blood for Pakistan’s first GenNow slasher flick, *Zibahkhana *, he inventively mixed gelatine with food dye to suit the shoestring budget.
The effect though was both real and repulsive. The story of four urban teenagers who take a shortcut to a rock concert through a forest only to face creepy blood-dripping zombies and other ghoulish creatures wowed the young home audience and the critics abroad.
*Zibahkhana *, sub-titled Hell’s Ground — though the literal translation means, The Slaughterhouse — became the talking point of countless horror film festivals and even scalped two international awards.
These are interesting times for Pakistan cinema. A bunch of new filmmakers are experimenting with different genres, working on fresh ideas. Like *Zibahkhana *, director Muhammad Saife Hasan’s *Victoria ka Ticket *, inspired by writer Rohinton Mistry’s short story, isn’t the usual Lollywood masala. And director Mehreen Jabbar’s *Ramchand Pakistani *is based on the true story of a Pakistani Dalit boy and his father who spend five years in a Gujarat jail for accidentally crossing the border.
It wasn’t easy bringing these films to life. Over the years the number of single-screen theatres in Pakistan has dwindled from 1,500 to 250. There’s no mushrooming of multiplexes either. In this backdrop, raising money for films continues to be extremely tough. Omar, who owns several ice-cream cafes, funded the entire $70,000 (about Rs 30 lakh) project from his own pocket.
“I bought the cheapest high-definition camera,” he says. The digitally-lensed *Victoria’s Ticket *cost even lesser: a mere Rs 3 lakh. “Now I want to raise money to make a full-length celluloid feature,” says director Muhammed Saife, whose film is about an eight-year-old boy, his mother and an old stamp collector.
Equally interesting is the way money was rustled up for *Ramchand Pakistani *. Producer Javed Jabbar — “I also produced and directed Pakistan’s first English film, ‘Beyond the Last Mountain’, in 1976 which was also shown in the first Bombay film festival,” — reveals that the initial contribution came from home.
“But that apart, a group of 19 friends, ranging from IT professionals, biscuit company owners, hoteliers, even an editor, put their money into a film for the first time. Two commercial firms provided the rest,” says Jabbar, who also served as a minister in Pervez Musharraf’s government. The overall cost, director Mehreen says, is in the range of 700,000 US dollars (Rs 3 crore).
But the returns have been promising. The catalyst was Shoaib Mansoor’s *Khuda Ke Liye *(2007) that dealt with the predicament of Muslims in the post 9/11 world and earned both critical acclaim and box-office dividends. Also released last year, *Zibahkhana *too has already recovered its cost. “I have even sold the rights for USA, UK and Japan,” says Omar, 46, who grew up admiring Christopher Lee’s Hammer movies and Ramsay horror flicks. Ironically, he also runs the finest website on Indian horror films.
*Ramchand Pakistani *is scheduled for release across the border on August 1. “We have got the censor certificate but we want to publicise the film properly before releasing it in India,” says Mehreen.
Both Mehreen and her father Javed visited the Indian jail in Bhuj to create an authentic prison for the movie. “Mr Mani Shankar Aiyyar joked with us and said, you are the only Pakistanis who want to get into an Indian jail and not walk out of it,” says Javed.
For an industry that enjoys doing action and romantic fantasies, involvement with realism is a relatively new feature. According to Javed, “It is part of a creation of contemporary Pakistani identity”. Omar offers a slightly different take. “I just wanted to have fun. I set a cat among the pigeons because I wanted to do something that rips the system apart. This is my love letter to the slasher flicks I grew up with.”