|
Punjabi
Cinema
Pakistani Cinema
People of South Asia know Mehdi Hasan, Ghulam
Ali for their style of rendering the Urdu and Punjabi Gazal and Lyrics.
But Pakistan has had its own stars and famous people of film industry.
Many or rather most of the talented people have been Punjabis.
It is all mainly in Lahore and fondly they call it Lollywood on the line
of Bollywood (a rather funny name for Bombay Film industry).
Punjabi films audience had been mainly rural but with great growth of
cities in Punjab Pakistan of 70s and 80s, the market for films dropped and
thus Television plays, soaps and serials became more popular among urban
societies.
There was a time in Punjabi films upto possibly mid 70s when the quality
was still ok but after that it began to deteriorate much.
Before partition in 1947, Lahore was a major film center where as early as
the 1920s silent movies were made.
Much of the development of Lahore's film making was done by D M Pancholi ,
whose studio was managed by Diwan Sardari Lal when Pancholi ji left for
Bombay in the late 40s.
The first film of Pakistan was made by Mr. Lal, released in 1948, Teri
Yaad.
It didn't succeed at box office but Lahore kept going on.
In 1949 and 50 some Indian film people (including Shaukat Hussain Rizvi)
migrated from Bombay to work in Lahore.
New studios were established (like Shahnoor, Federal, Quaisar and Karachi)
in Lahore and Karachi.
By 1956, 31 films were released and eleven of which made silver Jubilees,
six were more or less hit and 13 failed.
In 1957, there were about 15 film companies, 5 studios and 50 distri. CO's
but the content was still poor and there was hardly anything new so in
1961, out of 38 films only 5 made any money.
The real story is that most of the film technical people and artistic
talent was in Bombay and Lahore had limited resources.
In 1962 Pakistani government banned Indian films and in 1963, govt.
required that every theatre had to screen Pak films 85% of playing time.
In this time, E.I. in 60s Punjabi films were the rage, and the themes were
family stories, wild west type stories of lootmar, violence, nonstop
fighting, dacoits etc.
Strangely Pakistani politics is always poking its nose in film people's
life and constantly pressuring them to do this and that. This has caused
major damage to the growth of Pakistani and in particular Punjabi cinema.
Well in 1977 about 40 cinemas were badly burned or damaged by
demonstrators, after which the whole movie industry came to standstill for
a time. One supporter of the Bhutto govt, famous star Mohammad Ali was
especially targeted.
Anti Bhutto forces threatened to burn theatres showing his films.
Just a few years ago, the most famous super star of Punjabi films in
Pakistan, Late Sultan Rahi was gunned down and its rumoured that he was
victim of few political people. It was very painful to know his untimely
assassination.
As per his very close relatives in USA, who saw him grow from
child-artist, remember him very fondly and they have told me stories that
he was such a dedicated performer and ofcourse millions of his fans in
Punjab Pakistan could not believe.
General Zia deposed Bhutto and the things were not bright after that for
Pakistani films as he virtually killed the cinema. Many movies were
re-shot because of the ban on excessive romance etc.
By 70s films in Lahore became too commercial and producers had to coop
with few talented actors. When one actor died young in the 1970s he was in
50 or more unreleased movies and when an actress in 1982, eloped, she was
in more than 30 films, causing enormous damage to poor producers.
In mid 80s Babra Sharif the top star of her times, accepted that films
quality had come down. Once she said that in some productions there no
scripts at all as they were based on gimmicks and action fights.
Sincerely the language policy of imposing Urdu on Punjabi speakers didnt
contribute anything for the growth of Punjabis arts but our brothers and
sisters in Pakistan are an indomitable lot and they continue to survive
and work as hard as they can..
We should be proud of them as they are true warriors. Punjabi artists and
writers in Pakistan have to struggle damn hard to survive as so far there
have never been any encouragement from the government, nor great
commercial success for piracy and hardly any legal protection; which must
change as over 80 million Punjabis in Pakistan deserve some of
encouragement and support. When someone will see to this issue?
Future of Punjabi Films
Well the feature film industry in Punjabi
language can become a major one like Tamil or Hindi Film industry if we
have joint productions where people from India and Pakistan join hands.
There are impressive script writers in Lahore, really very talented actors
from Pakistan and by making joint ventures with Indian film people, we can
get really good quality Punjabi pictures.
The reason is that there is a huge market of over 100 Million Punjabis in
India Pakistan UK USA and Canada.
If we go for joint ventures, and governments in Delhi and Islamabad leave
the artistic people alone, we can avoid lot of wastage, avoid plagiarism,
copying and on top of all stop the piracy.
The piracy is killing industries in both countries.
If the piracy is stopped Pakistani Films (if they are qualitative) and TV
content based on Drama and play, can be exported to India making over 100
Million dollars or more of profits to start with.
But our brothers in Islamabad are still stuck with cold war mentality and
are suspicious about everything.
Indian film and TV content industry would be very happy to join hands with
Pakistani counter parts.
Pakistanis now watch Indian movies through pirated videos almost at the
same time when shown in India or sometimes even earlier.
There is a great bridge of piracy from Bombay to Dubai and back to Karachi
and Lahore.
Indian film and TV content can be marketed in Pakistani legally and the
cost is not that high but having an expanded market will help the starving
people of Bombay and Delhi too. This will also help grow Pakistani Film
and TV productions as they will be marketing to a wider audience as well.
If the two join hands, Punjabi films can usher into a totally new era and
this artistic blending will also help make us friends again.
Source: Appuonline
|
