|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
Editorial connection Not mere
melodies may03 It’s our
history, too 1970s
and onwards
The debate was
whether the celebrations in India were about hundred years of Bollywood or
of Indian cinema. The clumsiness of the situation was nothing new for us in
Pakistan; we who already have seen our history subjected to this clumsiness,
understanding it with reference to geography alone. Truth is that May 3, 2013,
marks a century of Indian cinema. We in Pakistan as well as those in the
country we know as Bangladesh (East Bengal of yore), too, have remained a
major part of this history that has brought us to this historic occasion.
May 3, 1913, it was when the first ever film Raja Harish Chandar was
released in what was then united India. Soon, Lahore became one of the three
biggest centres of film production in the subcontinent and persisted with a
mutually beneficial relationship especially with Bombay and less so with
Calcutta. To say that Pakistani film
industry began with the release of the first film after 1947 may be true for
some narrow nationalistic or academic purpose but the ties that bind this
part with that could not have been severed so easily. Why should Pakistan
not celebrate one hundred years of cinema in the subcontinent is then a
legitimate question. We have partially tried to
address this question in today’s Special Report by remembering the Indian
cinema’s contribution in providing entertainment to billions of people,
and looking once again at the connections we had with wonder and awe, one
must admit. Till the mid-1960s, the
Indian films were shown in Pakistani cinemas, and the ultimate of all
connections — between the viewer and the film — remained. However, the
thirst for Indian films did not die, and antennas and television brought
them back for us on Doordarshan. The VCRs and the video films filled the gap
till the Indian films were allowed in Pakistani cinemas again a few years
ago. Music, the distinguishing
feature of the subcontinental cinema, kept the people of this region united
on a spiritual level because we have all hummed the same tunes. Come Ziaul Haq’s time,
and the ideological battle that we were fighting with the enemy state cost
us our own film industry — known as Lollywood — and has not been able to
recover ever since.
connection Film world is full
of ironies: the three Indian stalwarts of acting — Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor,
and Dev Anand — were all born in what we today know as Pakistan. The tragedy king, Dilip,
was born as Yousuf Khan in Peshawar on December 11, 1922, the great showman
Raj Kapoor was also born in Peshawar on December 14, 1924, and the dashing
debonair, Dev Anand was born in Shakargarh in Narowal district on September
26, 1923. It’s an interesting fact that all the three, in one way or the
other, happen to be Punjabis. Dev Anand’s family
belonged to Punjab. Yousaf Khan is not a Pakhtun, but a Punjabi Pathan or
Hindko. Raj Kapoor’s father, Pirthvi Raj, a great actor in his own right,
was born at Samundri in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad). He belonged to a Punjabi
Khatri family and wanted to be a lawyer. After his graduation from Lahore,
he moved to Peshawar and completed his education. In addition to English and
Urdu-Hindi, Pirthvi Raj was fluent in Punjabi and Hindko. He had also learnt
literary Persian at college. It was in Peshawar that he developed interest
in stage acting through a family friend. He got married at a young age. When
he moved to Bombay to pursue his acting career, his first child, Raj Kapoor,
was only five years of age but he inherited language skills and the art of
acting from his father. Besides Dilip Kumar, Raj
Kapoor, and Dev Anand, Bombay owes much to Punjab, particularly to the city
of Lahore, in terms of talent in the fields of acting, writing, music and
direction. At the time of partition, six film studios were churning out
movies for cinema houses all over India, more than 20 of them in Lahore
alone. Fortunately, all the film activities of Lahore are well-documented in
the local journals of 1930s and 40s. It’s interesting to note
that in the pre-partition days, more than 20 film journals were being
published regularly from Lahore, both in English and Urdu. They included
Movie Flash, Film Pictorial, Screen World, Motion Pictures, Cinema, Movie
Critic, Star, Movies, Chitra, Paras, Khayyam, and Cine Herald. Considering
the fact that Lahore was the only film-producing centre in Northern India,
the figure of 20 film magazines shouldn’t come as a surprise. Film production had
started in Lahore in the mid 1920s with two young men from the inner city:
Abdul Rasheed Kardar, a photographer, and M. Ismael, a calligrapher and
poster designer. They both appeared in the first ever movie made in Lahore:
Daughters of Today (1924). Kardar was not satisfied
with the standard of movies made in Calcutta and Bombay, and wanted to give
them a realistic touch. In 1927, he bought a movie camera and set out to
make his own movies. Mysterious Eagle was his first venture. In a letter to
his distributors and exhibitors, Kardar wrote, “I have done away with the
hackneyed unbelievable camera illusions…let me hope this production of
mine would appeal to the educated classes as surely as it would thrill the
masses.” It did thrill the masses
and was appreciated by the sophisticated audience. Several productions
followed in the next eight years, including Safdar Jang, Farebi Shehzada,
Brave Heart aka Sarfrosh, The Golden Dagger, and The Serpent. They were all
silent movies. In 1932 Kardar directed
Heer Ranjha, which was the first talkie made in Lahore, but turned out to be
the last film of Kardar in this city. He was now looking for some big-time
ventures. So, he moved first to Calcutta and finally to Bombay where he
rose to the status of the most successful film director of the day, with
blockbusters like Shahjehan, Dard, Dulari, Dastan, Dil-lagi, Jadu and Dil
Diya Dard Lia to his credit. His old time friend and
co-worker, M. Ismael, spent some time in Calcutta and Bombay but finally
came back to Lahore and performed some memorable character roles in the
local movies. The grand old man
of Punjabi cinema died in Lahore in 1975 — the golden jubilee year of his
film career! Kardar and M. Ismael are
just two names out of a long list of the Punjabi actors, directors, writers,
singers, composers, and technicians who started their career in Lahore and
then moved on to Bombay. K. L. Saigol, Balraj Sahni, Karan Deevan, Sunder,
I.S.Johar, Shyam, Om Prakash
and Suresh, to name a few. Pran was a
well-established hero of Lahore film industry, after doing the lead in
Khandan against Noorjehan. When the communal tension got worse in Lahore,
Pran sent his wife and one year old son to Indore, but he himself remained
in Lahore. On August 11, 1947, some well-wishers gathered at his place and
advised him to leave because now the situation was out of their control.
With heavy heart and tearful eyes, Pran left Lahore, never to come back. On
August 12, 1947 there was a big attack on his neighbourhood and several
Hindus were killed. Among the female Lahori
artistes were Mumtaz Shanti, Khursheed, Veena, Begam Para, Noorjehan,
Surayya, Meena Shori, Manorma, and the Kinnaird College graduate Kamini
Kaushal. Shiyama of Baghbanpura
Lahore, moved to Bombay in December 1947 and got a small role in S.M
Yousaf’s family drama Garhasti, but within the next two years she was able
to sign as many as eleven movies. Mohammad Rafi and Shamshad
Begum had moved to Bombay in the early 1940s. Music composers Jhanday Khan,
Ghulam Hyder, Pandit Amarnath, Husanlal-bhagatram, Hans Raj Behl, Khursheed
Anwer, Feroz Nizami, Mohindra Singh, Shyam Sunder, O.P.Nayyar and the Lara
Lappa fame composer Vinod, all started in Lahore and ended up in Bombay. Among the film poets,
Qamar Jalalabadi, D. N. Madhok and Tanveer Naqvi, all came from Lahore and
so did the famous fiction writers Krishan Chander and Rajinder Singh Bedi,
who wrote some of the best film scripts in the 1950s and the 60s. Among the
migrant film directors we can name Kedar Sharma, O.P.Dutta and Prem Dhawan. As we can see, some of
them migrated in search of greener pastures but for others it was a forced
migration. Most of the artistes, directors, producers, distributors and
cinema-owners were non-Muslims and had to leave Lahore amidst communal
violence and furious bloodshed. A Government College graduate, Buldev Raj
Chopra, who edited film magazine Cine Herald, couldn’t even think of
separating from his beloved city of Lahore, but then a mob attacked his
house and he had to run for life. He had no idea at the time that this
migration was a blessing in disguise. In Bombay, and in due time, he became
a film mogul. In 1996, when he had
already become the most revered film icon of India with 28 great movies to
his credit, he still remembered Lahore as a separated beloved and wanted to
be at the place of his childhood and youth once again. Parvez Rahi, a veteran
film journalist of Lahore, wrote to him for some information that he needed
for his book, The Film History of Punjab. B.R. Chopra`s joy knew no bounds
on receiving a message from Lahore and he instantly wrote back “Your
letter brought the springtime perfume from Lahore, the nostalgic memories of
my childhood and youth. How I wish the two separated brothers could live
like friends at least.” Chopra was much excited to
learn about a book that would …“show glimpses of the pre-partition film
industry when the two communities lived like brothers.” Chopra goes on to
say, “In fact, the political atmosphere at Lahore in those days was so
friendly that one never expected it to be part of this unfortunate
separation.” Towards the end of his
letter, he says, “Maybe, I am able after all to come to Lahore one
day…” Alas, it was not meant to be…B.R Chopra died before his last
wish could be fulfilled.
Not
mere melodies It is stating the
obvious that film music has been one of the most popular, if not the most
popular, form of music ever since its inception. In the last eight decades,
the only music many have been exposed to has been film music and it has
become their benchmark for assessing all other kinds of music. The ethos of mainstream
cinema promoted music. The antecedents of the cinema have been Indar Sabha
and the fund of mythological tales all located in an environment that
promoted a fantasy like fulfillment of desires. What was needed was an
uplift, a transportation from the here and now into a world that did not
gloat over the unbridgeable contradictions of life. What other medium could
have been more suitable for creating this dream like world than music? The main component has
been not the background score but the song as sung on the screen by the
actors. So great has been the need for the song that a willing suspension of
disbelief takes over and no one questions the song being sung by some other
person than the one lip-synching on screen. In pre-playback days, even
the actors with marginal training were forced to sing, but mercifully since
the 1940s specialised singing took over and the genre has not looked back
since. Film music has always been
there, in the sense that one did not really have to go looking for it, as
has been the case with other forms of music. Radio was probably the cheapest
means of listening to film music. One radio set was enough for the entire
household or a shop or a locality and listening to it was almost free.
Nobody except a miniscule number paid its license fee. The radio was a popular
platform for the broadcast of film music and Radio Pakistan without any
policy strictures played film music while in India the policy of All India
Radio of not promoting film music had to be bent on immense popular demand
to permit broadcasts under the caveat of Vivat Bharati. But before that,
film music was broadcast from Radio Ceylon, its exclusive claim to a wide
listenership. The films, too, were a
cheap form of entertainment, especially in the urban centres and despite all
the taboos involved drew enough crowds to become the second largest film
industry in the world. But it can be safely surmised that the people
listening to film music were far in excess to those who actually went and
saw the film. The appeal of the film song was its own merit without recourse
to the situation of the film or on whom the song was picturised. But, at the same time, for
the ordinary listener this placing within a certain context was of crucial
importance. Most people understand music through the words or the lyrics,
thinking its musical rendition to be a mere interpretation of the text. The
situation in the film provided yet another context to them. The pure abstraction of
the classical forms was narrowed down and made more concrete. The strength
of music per se is its abstraction but in case of more popular forms of
music a certain reductive intrusion is desirable. Film more than any other
medium provided this external reference with great deal of facility. Film music had evolved to
be the most eclectic of the forms in a musical environment that took pride
in the purity of the form. From classical to folk it lent itself to music
from all over the world — be it the classical symphonies of the western
classical tradition or the samba and tango dance tunes of Latin America, the
jazz of the US and the pop music that spread like wild fire all over the
western world after the second world war. In the early phase of
subcontinental cinema, the classical forms were abridged so that its
compositional part could be highlighted to fit in the time slot allocated to
a single film song. Since these songs were also marketed separately, the
technological limitation of the 78rpm record too happened to be the
determining factor in the duration of the song. It settled down to one
asthai and two antaras with a couple of interval pieces all adding up to
about three minutes of music. The founding fathers like
Jhande Khan, R.C Boral, Panna Lal Ghosh, Ghulam Haider and Punkaj Malik and
the second generation of Anil Biswas, Khem Chand Prakash, Khurshid Anwar,
Firoz Nizami and Naushad served film music to the best of their creative
abilities. This was the new platform
which had endless possibilities. It catered to popular music and popular
taste, avoided pure abstraction, heightened the dramatic conflict of the
film and did not really have to conform to the many limitations that
classical music imposed on itself. It was also extremely well
paying. It attracted talented composers, vocalists and instrumentalists as
the options of creating and performing were on the decrease with the
princely states beset with their own problems of scarce resources in the
second quarter of the twentieth century. Despite the wholesale
borrowing from sources all over the world the composers were creative enough
to melodiously indigenise the tunes. S.D. Burman, Shanker Jaikishen, O.P.
Nayyar, Salil Chaudry and C Ramchandar had no qualms about seeking music
inspiration from any source but they had the ability to create music in its
final form that was very local and very familiar. The foundation of our
music, the melody, was never lost sight of and many of the tunes which
originated in other parts of the world sounded very sub continental as a
finished product. Even in the heavily synthesised compositions of A.R Rehman
this fact has not been overlooked. The large-scale
importation of music from foreign sources has become all too obvious as the
indigenisation of this external source is at times found to be inadequate.
Many a time, compositions from the two countries India/Pakistan have been
remixed and presented as original for the success of the film. caption Clockwise from top: Khwaja
Khurshid Anwar, Shankar Jaikishan, S D Burman, R D Burman and Nasir Hussain.
may03 Within a few days,
on the third of May 2013, to be exact, the Indian cinema will have completed
a hundred years of its existence — a century of a fabulous enterprise that
has brought entertainment to billions upon billions of people, enabled
hundreds of thousands of people to make their living out of it and a large
number of them to develop their arts and crafts. Although much that has
been churned out of the Indian studios has been dismissed by critics and
discerning audiences as escapist fare, there has also been a steady stream
of films that have reflected the times and trials the Indian people have
lived through, their hopes and their frustrations, their tragedies and their
triumphs. And, there have also been attempts, some of them remarkably
successful, at extending the limits of cinematic expression, at developing
the language of cinema. It is a story of huge
proportions, impossible of coverage in its many aspects in a short piece for
Sunday morning reading. What is being attempted at the moment is a brief
introduction to the salient features of the Indian cinema, which may be
followed by accounts of the various phases in its history and the
contribution made to its achievements by a large number of film-makers,
writers, directors, artists and technicians. Born out of the womb of
the song-and-dance Parsi theatre of the nineteenth century, the Indian
cinema’s greatest achievement perhaps has been its success in sustaining
the values of a pluralist society.
But, by and large, the
Indian cinema has profited from accommodating the people’s diverse
cultural norms and practices. It has provided space for both Hindu
mythological and Muslim social tales, and to simple rural folk and wily
urbanites alike. The Indian film has
benefited greatly from the diversity of national cultures and languages in
the country that found expression in the approaches to cinema of its
legendary founders in India, such as Phalke, Sarkar, and Himanshu Rai. If,
on the one hand, the mainstream Indian film in Hindi-Urdu drew upon the
models set by the European cinema and Hollywood (to the extent of stooping
to accept the label of Bollywood), it also gained immensely from the
regional cinema. Bengali, Telegu and Tamil cinema not only brought their
literary and art traditions into the fold of the Indian film they often
helped the artists to have the better of the moneybags. There was a time when
Kolkata (then Calcutta), Mumbai (then Bombay) and Lahore (only the name of
the city has not changed) represented schools of thought that had a great
deal in common and which also displayed features unique to them. The
different styles they adopted to dominate the box-office made the fare
richer. The size of the Indian
market has played no small a part in the growth of its cinema. Although
India never had as many cinema houses as its huge population needed, the
market was large enough to allow the rise of a minority cinema. It was
possible for quite a few film-makers (though not for all of them) to recover
their investment, and sometimes make a profit too, on their low-budget
offerings on unconventional themes and with unknown actors. India is one of the few
countries that gained from the post-war debate on the states’
responsibility for helping national film industries realise their potential
not only for offering healthy cultural diversion but also as means of
spreading information and education. The Film & Television Institute of
India (FTII) at Pune has been one of the rare success stories of state
intervention in a field that embraces art and industry both. Some of the
scriptwriters, directors, actors and technicians produced by the Institute
have brought into the Indian cinema streams of realism and purposeful
story-telling that the people have found as entertaining as they have been
edifying. During the ten decades of
its existence the Indian cinema has given the audience four major gifts.
First, it has given the people of India their lingua franca. You may call it
Hindi, you may call it Urdu, or you may find in it the language called
Hindustani that many thought offered a way out of the Hindi-Urdu
controversy. Moulvi Abdul Haq was not wrong when he acknowledged cinema’s
role in popularising a common vehicle of expression. It is largely from the
film that countless Indians learn to communicate with one another. Secondly, Indian cinema
can compete with the radio in its claims of having kept the country’s rich
music alive. Film has enabled many outstanding composers, vocalists and
instrumentalists to preserve the best of their classical and folk music, the
work of some of whom will be discussed on another occasion. Even the hybrid
music created by mixing the classical and the folk with easy-to-sing
melodies can stand on its own. Thirdly, as an unintended
result of the film-makers’ endless search for grand or eye-catching
locales, a large number of people have been able to see their historical
monuments and marvels of nature on the film screen. All of these monuments
may not survive the assaults on them by predatory estate developers, at
least without losing their perspective, but they will be preserved in film
archives, thanks to the distinct place in a community’s life that cinema
occupies alongside literature. Fourthly, cinema offers us
glimpses of the Indian people’s history. How they grappled with the trials
of colonial rule, how they faced hunger and famine, how their eating habits
and modes of dress changed with time. The film has also recorded the changes
that have taken place in its own content and appearance — how a huge
population condemned to living in dark alleys has enjoyed dreams of dancing
with pretty damsels in parks and gardens and how millions have found
catharsis of their miserable existence in great thespians’ interpretation
of human tragedy, even in their attempts to romanticise failure in love. Good or bad, the Indian
film remains one of the most authentic records of the life of the people of
the subcontinent during the past 100 years. It has been a long haul
for the cinema from attempts to discover the India identity through Raja
Harish Chandar and The Light of Asia to the technological make-believe of
today and it will take quite some time to tell this story, even in a most
condensed form. caption Clockwise from top: Isha
Deol, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Yash Chopra, Sanjeev Kumar, Kamini Koshal,
Ahmjad Khan, Nutan and Mala Sinha.
It’s our
history, too One wonders why
Pakistan is not celebrating the one hundred years of cinema in the
subcontinent. The first film, Raja Harish Chandar, made by Dadasaheb Phalke,
released in May 1913 in Bombay, marked the beginning of the journey of
subcontinental cinema which has ended up becoming the biggest film industry
in the world. Where do we begin our film
history in Pakistan — Teri Yaad or Hichkole, the first two films released
after 1947? And, there is a controversy in it as well. One group of critics
says that Pakistani cinema started with the release of the first film after
its creation while the other group insists that the first film implies that
the film that started being made after the creation of the new country. Even if we trace the
history of our films, where do we place the films that were made in East
Pakistan, which subsequently became Bangladesh in 1970 after a bloody
struggle for independence? But can it be forgotten
that Lahore was a centre of film-making in the subcontinent, the first film
being made here released in the 1920s by Gopal Krishen Mehta who worked in
the Railways? It may have been the joint effort of Roop Lal Shori, A.R
Kardar and M Ismail. Their production house, Premier Film Company, made
Daughters of Today in a studio set up next to the Bradlaugh Hall and the
success of the film made Lahore a centre of film-making in the subcontinent.
It was the era of silent
films and the growing demand for films facilitated the transition from
touring companies pitching their tents to permanent cinema halls. Probably a
dedicated cinema hall in Lahore Royal Talkies was commissioned outside
Taxali Gate in 1918. Or, can we forget all
those creative persons who used to make a beeline for Calcutta and Bombay in
pursuit of a career in film from all parts of the subcontinent, including
those parts that became initially Pakistan and then were split further into
Pakistan and Bangladesh? Or, the many who were born
here but hit adulthood after migration of 1947 in independent India and made
sterling contribution to cinema? Lahore was one of the
centres of theatre. So many from this area went to work in the bigger
theatres of Bombay and Calcutta. With the advent of films, some got absorbed
in the new forms thrown up by the new medium. Some could not adjust to the
changing requirements ushered in by technology and gradually faded away. These new film
personalities that appeared on the screen and those who worked behind the
cameras were from all parts of the subcontinent. They were from all
religious denominations and spoke all kinds of languages, even though with
the advent of the talkies it was decided that the spoken language of North
India would be the language of the movies. So, Bengalis, Marathis, Pathans,
Punjabis, Tamil, Sindhis, Andhrans and Malayalam, Biharis, Gujaratis and
Urdu-speaking ashraaf (elite) of Delhi, Hyderabad and Lucknow, all pooled in
culturally to make the industry find firmer ground to stand on. Similarly, theatre had a
substantial input of music and it got transferred on to the screen with the
advent of the talkies. All musicians, vocalists, composers and sound
engineers worked in rediscovering the lighter side of music, creating a new
format called the film song as well as the background score. Film song was peculiar to
the region and it produced composers and vocalists who ruled popular taste
in music across the length and breadth of the subcontinent. This even
remained the case when the Indian films were banned from being displayed on
screens in Pakistan but the music could be heard on the radio. If Lata
Mangeshkar and Muhammad Rafi were the uncrowned monarchs of melody so were
Noor Jehan and Mehdi Hasan. The territory of their popular appeal did not
respect the political boundaries of India and Pakistan, and Bangladesh a
little later. One of the greatest moguls
of Indian film industry Himanshu Rai started his film-making enterprise in
Lahore and it was his success with the film made in Lahore — Light of Asia
— on the life of the Mahatama Buddha that he was able to set up the Bombay
Talkies that defined the Indian film industry. Can one forget that
another movie mogul, A. R Kardar, initially made his beginning from his
hometown Lahore by setting up Arme Artist with M. Ismail and later a
production house in Calcutta and then a studio in Bombay. It became the signature
tune of the success of India films of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. And, Noor
Jehan who created and established the parameters of film song along with K.L.
Saigol from her childhood worked in the three centres — Lahore, Calcutta,
and Bombay — and set the trail that was to be followed by other vocalists
as well. So, who does the film
industry really belong to? It belongs to all those who worked for its birth
and then growth, all those responsible for its blooming into a handsome
presence. They came from all parts of the colonial or British India fired by
their creative energies and worked in building the medium that was to assume
its very own form. And, mind you, it was not even India, it was British
India like the dynastic India of the Mughals, Khiljis, Tughlaqs, Lodhis,
Rajputs, Guptas and Mauryas in the earlier phases of history. Political labels change
but the land and the bulk of the people remain a constant. These hundred
years is a shared heritage and it needs to be celebrated across the length
and breadth of the subcontinent. The best proof, if proof is needed, is the
format of the major tradition of films in Pakistan and Bangladesh. It has
followed the grand design of the subcontinental cinema, the same dance and
song sequel that embeds characters and plot in it. It is based on the
principles of dramaturgy that defined the contours of a performance in this
part of the world as laid down in Natshastra two thousands years ago. caption Dadasaheb Phalke.
1970s and
onwards Lollywood survived
partition of the subcontinent against all odds. However, it could not escape
the militarisation of the state and the consequent Talibanisation of the
society. The wound partition
inflicted on Lollywood is a theme constantly explored by Stockholm-based
political scientist Ishtiaq Ahmed (see the Lahore Film Industry in Anjali
Roy’s and Chua Huat’s Travels of Bollywood Cinema). While literature on the
topic beyond Ahmed’s academic and journalistic writings is almost
non-existent, Mushtaq Gazdar’s Pakistan Cinema: 1947-1997 is the only
full-length analytical study of Pakistani cinema ever written. Yasin
Goreja’s Pakistan Millennium Film Directory (2003) offers a mine of
information but no analysis. Drawing upon Ahmed and Gazdar for historical
facts, this brief essay will epigrammatically outline the general causes
that contributed to Lollywood’s decline. Pre-Partition The first silent film made
in Lahore, The Daughters of Today (Director: G K Mehta), was released in
1924. A.R. Kardar, along with M. Ismail, established the first studio in
1928 and produced the first talkie, Heer Ranjha, in 1932 (first Bombay
talkie, Alam Ara, was released in 1931). As Lollywood pioneers, Roop Lal
Shori and D.M. Pancholi, a Gujrati, also deserve special mention. While Bombay, Calcutta and
Madras emerged as filmmaking cities earlier than Lahore, the latter did not
take long to catch up. Most importantly, unlike Calcutta and Madras, Lahore
film centre was tightly integrated with Bombay. It was a mutually beneficial
interaction. The partition severed the
link. While a talented lot from Bombay moved to Lahore, notably Noor Jehan,
Khurshid Anwar and Manto, the talent-drain from Lahore was enormous. While Indian films until
1965 were shown in Pakistan and vice versa, film workers also moved across
the border. For instance, technically, the first film produced in Pakistan,
Shahida, featured Nasir Khan, Dilip Kumar’s brother. Decades later,
Muhammad Ali featured in Manoj Kumar’s Clerk. Zeba Bakhtiar, Mohsin Khan,
Qatil Shifai, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Haseena Moin were welcomed in Bollywood
in the late 1980s onwards. Of late, Atif Aslam, Rahat
Fateh Ali Khan and a few others have established themselves as accomplished
performers in Bollywood. However, these days, Pakistani talent is migrating
to Bombay in search of survival as Lollywood has entered a terminal decline.
Lollywood’s decline, however, was not pre-destined. Post-Partition Showing great resilience,
Lollywood overcame the partition loss. Despite competition on the circuit
until 1965, films featuring Santosh Kumar and Sabiha, Muhammad Ali and Zeba,
Ejaz and Firdous, Nadeem and Shabnam, or mega-star Waheed Murad attracted
huge audiences and did big business. In the 1960s, Lollywood
was among the top ten film-producing industries in the world. While
Lollywood was able to both survive the partition and compete with Bollywood,
it could not escape the objective socio-political realities. On the one hand, a nation
imagined on puritan basis always had an awkward tolerance for an impure
artistic expression, laced with ‘vulgarity.’ Our film actresses,
especially, could never command the social acceptance and respect despite
their enormous talent and fame. They remained ‘red light area girls.’ On the other hand, an
unfriendly state made the film job even more difficult when democracy was
overruled. A strict censorship introduced by the first military rule reduced
the film genre to song-and-dance romantic sequels. No doubt, progressives in
Lahore offered sober classics such as Kirtar Singh, arguably the best film
on partition made in the subcontinent, yet creativity was discouraged. The ban on Indian films
and censorship introduced another rotten trend of plagiarising. Film makers
and script writers would drive to Kabul where Indian films were shown on
cinema and popular Bollywood plots were unabashedly replicated. This
practice in vernacular was called “charba” which further discouraged
creativity, consequently hampering Lollywood’s growth. Thus, restricted by
censorship, petty commercial interests turned Lollywood into a wasteland. A national cinema has also
a pedagogical role to play. Lollywood had the responsibility to hone popular
taste and aesthetics. But profit-seeking filmmakers would not dare violate
the ‘best practices.’ As a result, excellent production which in some
cases won international acclaim, such as Jago Hua Sawera or Mati Ke Diye
badly flopped. In 1973, Bhutto’s
government, realising the deteriorating condition of the film industry,
established the National Film Development Corporation (NAFDEC). However, Zia
regime’s censorship was so restrictive that it became virtually impossible
to express new ideas through form, content or artistry in a film. On the one hand, outright
jihadist films were produced by Lollywood, for instance: Ghazi Ilam Din,
International Gorilay, Changa Manga, Mujahid, Aalmi Ghunday, Hum Panch, on
the other hand an Islamified on-screen discourse became a norm. Every conflict in most
films would be solved or explained by invoking religion. Islamified
narratives would help please censorship authorities and were unquestionably
accepted by uncritical audiences. Meantime, a generalised
Islamification of state and society not merely constrained the political
imagination of ordinary Pakistanis but also changed country’s ideological
outlook. The post-Zia generation had no time for artistic expressions. While
members of an Islamist outfit were already planting bombs at theatres in
Lahore, still-surviving cinemas houses attract the puritan wrath every time
zealots take to streets to vent their anger at the USA. On September 21, last
year, six theatres were gutted to protest against an anti-Islam US video.
Meantime, the number of Lollywood productions from a peak of 100 productions
annually, at average, has declined to 10. National cinema, at least in case
of Pakistan, truly reflects the nation.
|
|
There
have been occasions when the film industry got afflicted by the frenzy of
partisan politics, revivalist cults and the virus of communal madness, that
could draw a lament from Manto in 1947 and Shah Rukh Khan in 2012. 
