Indian films: High court issues notice to censor board, media

Cinema owners, distributors want a say in the ban on exhibition of Indian movies. DESIGN: JAMAL KHURSHID

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Thursday issued a notice to the Central Censor Board and Pakistan Electronic Media Association (PEMA) for December 16 on a petition by Pakistan Cinema Owners Association and distributors of films to become party in the case against exhibition of Indian movies.

Barrister Ali Zafar appeared before the court on behalf of the petitioners and said that the case filed by a private TV show host against exhibition of Indian films was a misrepresentation an ex-parte order for stopping the Central Board of Censors from certifying smuggled films only.

He said the Pakistan Motion Pictures Ordinance and the Censorship of Films Rules, which govern the jurisdiction of the Censor Board, did not prohibit the certification and exhibition of any Indian films.

He said the Censor Board could refuse to certify a film prejudicial to the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan.

He said the Censor Board was duty-bound to examine and certify films on a case-to-case basis.

He said the revival of Pakistani films depended on the existence of cinemas and his clients had invested heavily in setting up state-of-the-art centres in Pakistan.

He said the people of Pakistan were starved for entertainment and appreciated the revival of the “cinema culture” which also presented a soft image of Pakistan to the rest of the world.

He said the existence of the cinema had revived a form of art and culture in Pakistan and the Pakistani film industry had seen a resurgence of quality films.

He said the petitioner had sought to ban all Indian films and the court’s order could mean the death of cinemas in Pakistan.

He added that the livelihood of thousands of people employed in the industry would be jeopardised.

He said that although the court had not stopped the Censor Board from certifying Indian films and only banned smuggled films, the chairman was delaying certification of legally imported films as well.

Earlier the court had banned smuggled films in the country.

The petitioner had submitted that the exhibition of all Indian films, TV dramas and other programmes was in violation of Section 270-A Motion Pictures Ordinance 1979 and Martial Law Order 81.

The petitioner had requested the court to accept the petition and issue directions to all respondents to stop the exhibition of all type of Indian content on Pakistan’s channels.

Meanwhile, India’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari on Thursday criticised the Pakistani court’s order to stop the screening of Indian content on TV channels, saying that films and serials were ideas that couldn’t be stopped.

In a tweet, Tewari said, “Pakistani jingoists should know that films and TV serials are ideas and ideas can’t be barred.

The Pakistani government must remove them from negative list ASAP.”

The ban on Indian films has been widely criticised since it was announced last week.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2013.

“It’s my right to criticise Pakistan because I love it” – Fatima Bhutto

Pakistani writer and journalist Fatima Bhutto recently launched her debut novel, “The Shadow of the Crescent Moon”, before a full house at LSE. Saleha Riaz reports on Bhutto’s conversation with LSE’s Dr Mukulika Banerjee about her new book. A version of this article first appeared in The Express Tribune.

 

Bhutto’s new book, “The Shadow of the Crescent Moon”, is set in Waziristan, a region that is often in the news for all the wrong reasons. Launching the book at LSE, Bhutto said that she wanted to write about northern Pakistan but did not choose Peshawar, Bajaur Agency or Banu as those settings had too many prejudices connected with the Taliban and drones attached to them. Bhutto therefore picked the small town of Mir Ali – albeit a highly fictionalised version of the town – as the setting for her debut novel.

Bhutto also explained that she believes a novel’s characters unfold on their own: “It’s a strange process … You think you are building people, but they make themselves and they change across the writing of the book.”

The characters in Bhutto’s book are struggling with things she herself is curious about, and she sympathised with each of them, whether with their fears, longings or their suffocation. “In all of them, even the ones I didn’t agree with or felt offended by, I didn’t feel I could judge them.”

She was particularly intrigued by a character called Meena, who actively starts attending funerals: “Every morning, she finds out what soyem is happening where, and she turns up and starts asking questions. Meena used to disturb me very much when I was writing,” said Bhutto. “She used to rattle me and as her story started to unfold, I started to see more of her, rather than creating more of her.”

“You let the characters be, which is curious. You don’t actually have the control you have with non-fiction where you build structures that are very definite. With fiction, you observe and follow along,” explained Bhutto while discussing her writing process.

When asked if writing is her way of being political without entering politics, Bhutto argued that Pakistanis do not have a choice but to be political: “It’s what determines how you live and how you die; it is no longer an option to step out of politics.” As far as supporting a particular party is concerned, Bhutto – who is the niece of Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto – said she only supports people on the ground who are doing good work.

Bhutto also lamented that Pakistan is only talked about in terms of CNN headlines andNewsweek stories, rather than people. She complained that news coverage of the country is dehumanising—a report on drone strikes might say that ‘suspected underage militants’ were killed in a strike, when what it means is that children were killed. The need to counter his dehumanising language inspired Bhutto’s writing: “I wanted to write about people, about children—not underage militants,” she proclaimed.

By focusing on the lives of those who exist in what Dr Banerjee described as the twilight zone between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Bhutto also sought to give voice to those who are normally excluded from the mainstream and international media discourse. “Voices [are restricted] to those who can speak English, have been educated abroad, or have computers and can use Twitter,” she pointed out. To know the true state of affairs in more remote parts of Pakistan, for example in the western Balochistan province, Bhutto recommended reading newspapers in vernacular languages from the reason and – most importantly – traveling through the country and meeting people.

For those who can’t make the trip, “The Shadow of the Cresent Moon” offers one glimpse into an alternate version of Pakistan.

Saleha Riaz graduated from LSE with a BA in History in 2008. See The Express Tribune for her complete report of the book launch. 

 http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/indiaatlse/2013/12/06/its-my-right-to-criticise-pakistan-because-i-love-it-fatima-bhutto/

Pakistan Film Magazine: Inside the largest online database of Pakistani films

By Sher Khan

Published: December 5, 2013 in Express Tribune

Pakistani Super Hit Film Bulandi

Mahzar Iqbal is not one to talk about himself, but his personal endeavour has turned into the most thorough archive of Pakistan’s cinematic history. Iqbal’s website, the Pakistan Film Magazine, is the largest online database for Pakistani films to date.

Pakistani Super Hit Film Arman

“When I began to surf the internet in the late 90s, my searches on Pakistani movies, actors and music failed to provide any results. Even searching for Heer Ranja gave results of Indians movies only,” says Iqbal, who has lived in Denmark for most of his life.

“I’ve seen movies from around the globe. No doubt they are both technically advanced and professionally made, but our movies are the best entertainment for any average Pakistani like myself.”
The Pakistan Film Magazine is part of Mahzar.dk, which Iqbal launched in 1999 as a hobby to document Pakistan’s history and culture. His own interest in cinema has been inherent since he was a child. The website, which has been functioning for over a decade, has information on more than 4,000 movies, 4,500 artistes and 6,500 songs, with complete movies for online viewing as well.
“I still remember many songs from Radio Pakistan Lahore’s very popular programme Aap Ki Farmaish, with additional information such as film, singers, poets and music director’s names. I also remember many movies, trailers and songs on black & white TV. I will never forget my first cinema experience at the age of just seven, in 1969,” says Iqbal.

Pakistani Super Hit Film Hir RAnjha

A young film enthusiast, his grandfather would give him pocket money to buy film editions of Jang, Mashriq, Imrooz, Musawwat and collect weekly film magazines such as Musawar, Tasawur, Tasvir, Mumtaz, Screen Light and later, Nigar. By the time he migrated to Denmark in the 1980s, he had a vast collection of Pakistani films and had collected a large amount of information on local cinema.
His passion for cinema inspired a larger endeavour; to make a publicly accessible online archive for Pakistani film. After the relative success of his news-portal Mahzar.dk, he made a separate website for Pakistan Film Magazine in May 2000. The first content was a review of iconic Punjabi film Heer Ranja, with complete film details such as cast credit, music information and unique images from the film which he took from his digital camera.
“I have a very strong point-of-view on movie making in Pakistan. I believe that we should make more local movies with small budgets; it will increase the interest in local cinema. We should also change the main theme of our movies, since the most popular subject is our social and cultural problems,” says Iqbal.

“Personally, I hate actions movies, but I know that these movies are more appealing to the public. Female cinema-goers prefer romantic and musical movies, and the golden era of the 1950s-70s, consisted widely of these types of movies.”
After taking initial steps to increase on his website, Iqbal published a complete chronicle of film history dating back to 1948. His source of information was the Urdu film directories, compiled by renowned film journalist Yasin Gojra. Famous journalist and writer Aqeel Abbas Jafri helped him make corrections of dates related to artistes and films.
As the site expanded, Iqbal was faced with an issue of technical expertise, in which he had to publish information page by page, making it necessary to develop web design skills. He had heard about online database technology and soon enrolled at Copenhagen University in 2011, where he obtained degrees in both web development and design.
He used this newfound expertise to develop a complete database which streamlined his archiving process. This year, the reworked website was completed and uploaded a database of 3000 films from the pre-partition era, marking the celebration of 100 years of cinema.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 6th, 2013.
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A brazen attack on Pakistan’s free media By Mazhar Abbas in Express Tribune

A brazen attack on Pakistan’s free media By Mazhar Abbas

Published: December 4, 2013

The writer is a former secretary general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists

The attack on Express Media Group’s Karachi office is a direct assault on ‘freedom of the press’. It is not simply a wake-up call, but perhaps, a final call for the media.

Sadly, an attack on one group or journalists has never been considered as an attack on the ‘media Industry’ as in the past.

I wonder why we never took such attacks, collectively? Marketing or competition should not come in the way when it is terrorism we are dealing with, because it is like a fatal disease which can affect us all.

No one has, so far, claimed responsibility for the attack but apparently the failure of the police and intelligence in the first probe resulted in the second assault on December 2. This time, the attackers were more organised and picked the peak time when journalists were busy rushing to the office to meet the ‘deadline’. Safety measures taken after the first attack and rapid response from the security guards also foiled the possible attempt to enter the office premises.

However, police and intelligence agencies never probed into the previous attack and closed the investigation as a ‘blind case’. The question is why? No report on the investigation of the first attack was filed? No arrests were made? All this gave encouragement to the assailants. In the first attack, they came on two motor bikes. This time, there were more. Where were the police mobiles and why were they removed?

It’s time to rise and defend press freedom. Silence will not save you. Today, it is Express, tomorrow it could be another group. Remember the famous lines, ‘when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me’.

Here, I may recall the time when we fought a battle from a united platform with all the media stakeholders including owners, editors, journalists, hawkers with one voice observed a ‘One Day Strike’ and shut down newspapers when journalists came under attack and were killed.

I remembered the 1989 strike against the killing of three journalists. APNS, CPNE, PFUJ, APNEC, Akbar Faroosh Federation were on one platform. Again in 1995, when the then government closed six Karachi evening newspapers, a Joint Action Committee was formed and threatened to go on strike, if the ban was not lifted. The warning worked and within three days, the ban was lifted.
The next attack could be on another group or on another group of journalists, which God forbid could be fatal. If we act today, it can give a strong message to all those who are planning to supress the people’s voice, this time through terror.
Every media house must take any attack on any one group as an attack on the entire media. If in the 1950s there could be a joint editorial demanding the ban on “Civil and Military Gazette”, why can’t we do it for the ‘right reason’. Why can’t we have a joint editorial duly approved by APNS, CPNE, PBA, condemning the attack on the media and show resolve to fight this battle from united platform?
The symptoms of December 2’s attack indicate that the assailants were highly professional. Despite this being very congested area and with the traffic jam around the bridge and adjacent lanes, they managed to escape. The assailants must have been provided proper cover, by their accomplices.
Pakistani journalists have already paid huge prices. Post 9/11, over 100 journalists had been killed; some of them were brutally murdered after being kidnapped. Media houses or their bureaus in different parts of the country, particularly in K-P, Fata and Balochistan are under constant threat. Their cases have never been properly investigated or prosecuted. Yet, journalism has expanded from print to electronic, online to social media.
Will we all rise to the occasion? Silent will be as fatal and risky as in the battle field. We got this freedom after a very long struggle and we should not let it die.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 4th, 2013.