salams
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I just watched Zar Gul today–a Pakistani film at the Commonwealth Film Festival in Manchester England. It is produced by Usman Pirzada who was there to talk about it afterwards (nice fellow).
The film is on a par with Hollywood and European films as far as the technical side is concerned and it has brilliant lighting, cinematography, editing. The cinematography especially is awesome and shot throughout Pakistan. It is much better than any Indian film I have seen in this aspect. Awesome.
The story, the acting, the direction are all top-notch by international standards using mostly all the famous actors from pakistani dramas plus a lot of non-professionals including Talat Hussain. Faryal Gohar, and the Pirzada clan amongst others.
It is really worth watching. For the first time i watched a pakistani film and felt proud. The people clapped afterwards when it was shown.
It is in Urdu/Punjabi/Pushto and English being shot on location all over pakistan.
The film is about a young pathan who becomes an outlaw and dacoit–but hero to the poor–after his father is killed by a crooked politician. The film exposes the injustice and corruption in pakistan especially the politics and police and for that reason is currently banned there although I saw nothing in it except the harsh reality. It also exposes child labour in pakistan. I hope it does get a release in pakistan as it will be a massive boost to our industry.
They are looking for distributors in the West for a general release at the moment. It took 7 yrs to complete and the post-production alone cost £250, 000 pounds sterling!
Brilliant. If you can–go and watch it
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http://us.imdb.com/Title?0115044
[This message has been edited by Asif (edited July 03, 2002).]
REALITY CHECK
From Pakistan - a movie that lifts the lid on politics
By Stuart Whitmore
Crusade looking through a different lens
ON LOCATION NEAR LAHORE, Salmaan Peerzada is directing the final scene of Zar Gul (Golden Rose). Tension hangs heavy in the air. The leading man must pick his way through a deftly choreographed shoot-out - while worrying as much about his own safety as about his performance. Those are real Kalashnikovs his on-screen adversaries are toting. And they are loaded with real bullets.
A bravura display of method acting? Hardly. In a region flooded with munitions since the days of the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, almost every home has an AK47 or something similar. But special-effects weapons are much harder to come by. So, real guns, real bullets, real life - and out of it all a real film from and about Pakistan. Zar Gul is in sharp contrast to the gaudy-but-coy bump-and-grind movies normally churned out by Lahore’s studios. “Pakistani cinema is all formulaic,” complains Peerzada, who also wrote his own screenplay. “Six songs, six dances. A good guy, a bad guy, a love element. The story is always fantasy. Zar Gul is different because it deals with politics, corruption, repression and fundamentalism. It reflects the reality of life in Pakistan.”
That reality is one of a country in decay. In a grand sweep through the rugged landscape of the northwest, the story of Zar Gul’s life unfolds. As a boy he sees his father murdered. The youngster is then kidnapped and forced into slavery by a local bandit. Appalled by the suffering he witnesses in the slave camp, Zar Gul (Imraan Peerzada, the director’s brother) resolves to fight injustice wherever he encounters it. Years later, as a successful and philanthropic businessman, he recognizes his childhood abductor, Yar Badshah (Jamil Malik), who is capping a career as enslaver, drug dealer and murderer by entering politics - with the backing of the feudal elite whose dirty work he has been doing for so long. Zar Gul sets out to destroy Yar Badshah and expose the criminal elements behind him.
The film took just 15 weeks to shoot, but was five years in the making, partly due to problems sustaining its $1.7 million budget, and partly because of Peerzada’s commitment to quality. “I wanted to make a culturally indigenous film while avoiding the formulaic subcontinental style,” he says. “That way it would be accessible to Westerners and a new experience for Pakistani audiences.”
The movie has already proved a hit with critics at international film festivals, and is scheduled for screening at the biggest independent festival in the U.S., in Flagstaff, Arizona. A general release in London is also being discussed. Peerzada held special screenings in Islamabad and Lahore, inviting around 140 people from all walks of life, from rickshaw drivers to judges. “Everyone loved it,” the director says. “Zar Gul reflects the experiences of the audience in a way a formula film never will.”
Young working women identified with the film’s heroine Yasmin (Faryal Gohar), a beautiful schoolteacher who rebels against her middle-class, fundamentalist father and elopes with Zar Gul. Journalists recognized the plight of Zahid (Talat Hussain), a reporter fighting to tell Zar Gul’s story in the face of press controls. And many pronounced themselves impressed by the hero’s crusade for justice and honesty in Pakistani society.
The film’s harshly critical commentary on the feudal political system is counterpointed by its equally authentic depiction of village-level democracy. In a remote tribal community near the Khyber Pass, where no governmental jurisdiction reaches, Peerzada portrays the work of the jirga - a 5,000-year-old tradition in which all the villagers gather to make laws. “My brother Usmaan [the producer], sat in a special jirga session to get permission to shoot in their homes,” says Peerzada.
So far, so different. But there is a sound reason that the 100-odd Pakistani pictures produced every year stick to the safe song-and-dance formula. The local movie industry faces one of the strictest censorship codes in the world, four of the pillars of which are: No Kissing, No Nudity, No Corrupt Police, No Corrupt Politicians. The romance between Zar Gul and Yasmin respects the first two. As for breaking the last two, Peerzada is unrepentant. “Zar Gul is an average man standing up to a system that everyone knows has to change,” he says. “Politicians have been looting and plundering this country.” Still, Peerzada was careful not to be too blunt. He wants his film to be released. “That’s why I stayed on the mild side,” he says. “The full reality is quite horrifying.”
He will find out whether his hopes are well founded when the final print goes before the censors this month. Early signs were encouraging. The private screenings in Lahore and Islamabad were attended by a number of politicians, plus bureaucrats and army officers, an ex-chief justice and even a representative of the censors. But since then Pakistani politics has gone into convulsions once more as a tottering ruling party reaches out to Islamic shariah law in an effort to retain power.
Peerzada acknowledges he cannot now predict what the reaction of the censors will be. However, he says he hopes to find support from what might seem like an unlikely quarter. “Prime Minister [Nawaz] Sharif was elected with a mandate to eliminate corruption and destroy the power of feudal order,” the director says. If the government is genuine in its desire for change, Peerzada believes it will see Zar Gul as a powerful ally.
[This message has been edited by Asif (edited July 03, 2002).]
