Re: Pakistan's First Digital feature film screens in USA
Northern California Premiere of 'The Long Night'
Ras Siddiqui
("Raat Chali Hai Jhoom Ke" (the movie))
A group of people called the “3rd I” are making a sincere effort to promote what they call “South Asian Underground Cinema”. 3rd I held the Northern California premiere screening of Pakistan’s critically acclaimed movie “Raat Chali Hai Jhoom Ke” (The Long Night) at the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco on Saturday, September 28, 2002. And judging from both attendance and viewer response, it appears that this seminal digital effort by Producer-Director Hasan Zaidi and the script by writer Mohammed Hanif (a Newsline magazine reporter currently with the BBC Urdu service) has certainly hit a certain chord with both the young and the culturally interested segment of our community here.
Before we get to the movie itself it may not hurt to mention that one should be glad that more people did not show up at this venue to view this movie. It was as one would say, “sitting on the floor room only” because it was basically a sold out event via prepaid Internet sales. The many like this reporter who showed up at the door had a difficult time getting in especially since my wife and three others accompanied me. For others that were informed early but could not come, it would have been a let down to go back home, especially since finding a parking spot for your car in this part of San Francisco almost requires divine intervention. So right off the bat our thanks to Saqib and Maheen of the 3rd. I group for accommodating more people in the already cramped hall.
Saqib introduced us to the 3rd I concept and Maheen gave us a background of the movie screening before “Raat Chali Hai Jhoom Ke” (The Long Night) started. The English subtitles came in handy for the many in the audience who did not understand the Pakistani national language of Urdu. And one can add here that the subtitles quite accurately represented what was being said as compared to often embarrassing translation attempts that one sees from Indian (Bollywood) and Pakistani (Lollywood) cinematic efforts. But let us move on to the movie.
“Raat” (The Long Night) is about life in Karachi, Pakistan, or one can say that it is about life in the other Karachi, the one that the elite yuppies of that mega-city rarely venture out into. The central character Waleed (Faisal Rehman) is an MIT-educated Silicon Valley related head of a Pakistani software company who is about to meet with a Microsoft bigwig the next day to sign a multi-million dollar deal. Waleed is single and has been carrying on a telephone romance with a certain Fareeha Naz (Nadia Jamil) for months. And on this fateful long night Fareeha who has added something to her significant other’s drink tells Waleed to come immediately to an area outside of Karachi called Malir for a rendezvous. The rest as we can safely say here, is the whole movie. Waleed is out of his realm. He is out of his cocoon of safety. He has to interact with the poor struggling and dangerous elements in a Karachi that he has never experienced before.
Waleed is naïve. He believes in the goodness of mankind and wants to save the man (Anwar) that is dying in the house where Fareeha Naz lives. Fareeha herself is attractive but bored, self-centered and two-timing. Her character is possibly the most powerful one in the movie. And since Fareeha herself does not appear to be too interested in saving the dying man, Waleed takes it upon himself to find a doctor to do just that. And it is during this quest that he runs into the ugly side of Karachi. This is the world of thieves, drugs, terrorists, crooked policemen and prostitution, along with the world of transvestites, the common folks, and many ironies.
The Long Night is about ironies. And it has a subdued message within such ironies.
In his quest to find a doctor Waleed runs into characters that e.g. care more about the reception on television then human life. Villain and urban terrorist Baqar Khan (Arif Hasan) is shown at one moment viewing a scene from the Indian movie classic “Mughal-e-Azam” and in another ordering his sidekick to kill his captive. The poor police duo who are on the verge of losing their jobs for arresting someone drunk but important (and English speaking) “by mistake”, make this their own very special long night by breaking the law. One must say that Anwar Solangi and Naeem Siddiqui did a great acting job here.
Since it is not the purpose of a movie review to tell the reader the whole story, one has to stop and think about what ideas were being presented. The only people that seem to care about others in “Raat” are Kausar, a member of the oldest profession (brilliantly acted by Muneeza Kidwai) and members of the Heejra (Transvestite) community. Otherwise predators rule the streets on this long night. The roles of the two women characters namely Fareeha and Kausar are not what we are used to in Pakistani cinema. They are both very aggressive and take charge type of women who do not appear to be waiting for a hero to come and save them.
There is no singing and dancing by the characters in this movie like most of South Asian cinema. But songs are present, being played on cassette. If I am not mistaken, Pakistan’s great Sufi singer Abida Parveen is heard as is India’s top Diva Lata Mangeshkar (at a very ironical moment).
One can immediately observe that this is not the usual Pakistani movie. The storyline carries much adult content but it would not get much more than a PG (Parental Guidance) rating here in the US (possibly an R for the violence). And it is well made for a low budget movie. The character buildup could have been a bit stronger but it is only 94 minutes long (short for standard South Asian cinema). But it gets an “A” for effort in my books. It is not too far off in quality from India’s many ‘formula films” which have a much wider audience but both India (with some exceptions) and Pakistan still have much work to do to match quality International Art films like those coming out from current independent Iranian cinema (just an opinion). But one can certainly call “The Long Night” or “Raat Chali Hai Jhoom Ke” a good beginning and a refreshing change of direction in Pakistani films.