Struggling under an onslaught of Bollywood movies on black market DVDs, the owners of Pakistan’s empty cinema halls are imploring their government to lift a ban on India’s wildly popular masala flicks.
Movie houses that once saw audiences queue for Pakistan’s home-grown ”Lollywood” productions now say they need to screen films made by their once bitter rivals in glitzy Mumbai in order to survive.
”At the moment it has become absolutely vital for us to convince the government to allow the import of Indian films,” says cinema owner Jehanzeb Baig, chairperson of the Pakistan Cinema Exhibitors’ Association.
”The import would give us an emergency boost which is badly needed. There is absolutely no other way left to support the cinema industry.”
In the golden age of Pakistani cinema in the 1960s and 70s, four studios in Lahore and two in Karachi pumped out regular blockbusters, producing 300 movies in five languages in 1973, a good number of them box-office blockbusters.
But since then Pakistan’s studios have suffered a long steady decline, thanks to falling production values, simplistic and bloody plotlines and increasing censorship under various military regimes.
Last year, the few studios left in the eastern city of Lahore produced only 14 movies, and all of them bombed at the box office.
With the decline of Pakistani cinema, the number of movie houses has withered from more than 2 000 screens to around 300. Many have been torn down or converted into shopping malls.
Instead Western films and Bollywood’s famed ‘masala’ movies, with their winning formula of action, music, romance and humour, have taken Pakistani audiences by storm — at least in the privacy of their living rooms.
Despite an official ban from Pakistani cinemas and public TV channels, thousands of Indian titles are openly available in markets as DVDs, VCDs and, for those with dishes on their roofs, satellite broadcasts.
The government, however, has so far refused to budge from its ban on films made by its long-time rival India, in part citing Muslim sensibilities.
Indian movies, conservative by Western standards, only showed their first on-screen kiss a few years ago, but Islamabad fears even the long-obligatory steamy wet-sari scene may get some mullahs fuming.
Islamic hardliners in the arch-conservative North West Frontier Province have launched periodic crackdowns against ”vulgar” movies, prompting local police to rip down posters judged obscene.
”No, well not be allowing the import of Indian films, not even limited ones for the time being,” says Ziauddin Ahmed, chairperson of the Pakistan Film Censor Board.
”We are sensitive to our cultural requirements and censor policy.”
Lollywood ‘must improve quality’
Amid a political thaw between the long estranged nuclear-armed neighbours, many say it’s now time to lift the celluloid curtain.
Last week India agreed during talks on cultural exchanges to host a Pakistan film festival in Punjab and New Delhi, the Hindustan Times reported.
But the government officials said no proposal on screening Indian films in Pakistan was even considered in the talks.
”Even if the government allowed the import of a few films per year, with its own censor code, that would be fine,” says cinema owner Baig.
But others say that opening the gates to Indian film would prove the last nail in the coffin of Pakistani cinema.
”A lot of workers, technicians and artists are already unemployed because of the state of affairs in the film industry,” says veteran actor Yousaf Khan, a former head of the country’s actors association.
”If we allow the import to please a few stakeholders, the rest of the industry will also go unemployed.”
Many of Pakistan’s silver screen talent have already fled to Bollywood, which releases hundreds of films a year, many more than Hollywood.
Sensing even harder times ahead, big name Pakistani actors including Meera, Reema, Sana, Javed Shaikh and Moammer Rana have made the trek to the bright lights of Mumbai.
Some have worked on Indian films, others on joint productions, which many in the industry see as a new, third way ahead for South Asian cinema.
Pakistani actress-director Reema, who just completed post-production for her upcoming film Koi Tujh Sa Kahan (You are the Best) in Mumbai, is all for the new way of Indian-Pakistan collaboration in making movies.
”It can only improve our own work and performance and would bring in badly needed revenue for our cinema industry,” she says.
”It would provide us better and healthy competition, which would benefit our industry.”
But some in the industry say Pakistan has a long way to catch up before it can match the standards of Bollywood’s big-budget productions, increasingly shot in exotic locales from London to Switzerland.
”There is a need to support the industry by the government,” says Khan. ”It should inject money and impart training facilities for the artists. That is the best way to deal with the situation.”
A Lahore film industry delegation recently visited Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and pressed their case for the revival of Pakistani cinema.
The premier assured them the government was aware of the problem and dangled before them the prospect of building a new film city in Lahore, with studios and academies teaching acting and film-making, to boost local showbiz.
”We have to look at all these issues and then take a final decision,” says Ziauddin.
But he also had some cold, hard advice for Pakistani film-makers: ”Basically the industry has to improve its quality, and that is the solution.” – Sapa-AFP