Picture
Lahore, Pakistan's Lollywood, a once-robust movie-making machine, has fallen victim to religious-based government policies, cable TV and DVD piracy.

Odeon Cinema's creaky, ripped red vinyl seats are mostly empty except for a couple of back rows where a dozen Pakistani men sit slouched, their eyes half-open, legs slung over the seats in front of them.

Along the hall's bubble-gum pink walls, rows of fans barely move the hot, dank air. Odeon's loudspeakers crackle like a ham radio, a report in Los Angeles Times said.The feature on this recent evening is a Pakistani film called "Majajan," a love story.

The barely breathing, Lahore-based Pakistani film industry produces less than a dozen movies each year, which explains why every day, three times a day for last three years, only movie screened at the Odeon has been "Majajan."
       
Welcome to Lollywood, or what's left of it. It wasn't always this way. Back in 1960s & '70s, Lahore buzzed with movie shoots, red-carpet premieres and box-office hits.

Pakistan film industry has always been based here, and though it didn't have girth or dazzle of Bombay's Bollywood, "Lollywood" thrived in a country staking out an identity distinct from its Indian neighbor.In their heyday, theaters Odeon had queues of Pakistanis snaking far beyond box-office window and down Lahore's bustling sidewalks.

Moviegoers dressed in their snazziest salwar kameezes and arrived two hours before a showing to secure tickets. Today, Pakistani cinema has all but vanished, a victim of VCR, cable television, President Zia ul-Haq's Islamization of Pakistani society, and finally DVD piracy.

In 1985, 1,100 movie houses operated in Pakistan; today, only 120 are in business. The few directors, producers and cinema owners often rely on second jobs to make ends meet.
       
Reviving the industry necessitates junking what's left of Pakistani cinema and starting from scratch, says Jahanzaib Baig, a Lahore cinema owner pushing for a revival of Pakistani film. Baig has been lobbying the government to clamp down on DVD piracy, a scourge that keeps Pakistanis from leaving their living rooms to head to cinemas.

 "We have hit rock bottom," says Baig. "We can only go up. Whatever we had before is not only destroyed but is obsolete in terms of technology and skills. So we're setting foundation for a new film industry in Pakistan." Sangeeta, a Lollywood mega-star during the 1970s and one of few survivors still directing homegrown films, says a revival of industry can happen only if government lends a hand.

"We need government support," says Sangeeta, now 52. "We need new cameras, new studios. Right now, producers aren't investing because the equipment isn't good." On set of a television drama she's shooting, hardships Sangeeta faces are evident. The cameras are dead ringers for clunky 1980s camcorders. There are no trailers, no craft service, no security to keep Pakistani passers-by from wandering onto the set.
       
It all seems light years away from her glory days, when all of Lahore fawned over the curvy, vivacious movie star with dark-eyed appeal. She got her start in show business after coming home from school one afternoon and finding her parents chatting with a Lollywood director looking for a lead actress in his new film, "Bangle."

 "When he saw me he said, 'That's my heroine!' " she recalls. She was just 13. Sangeeta went on to star in more than 100 movies. Nowadays, she focuses on directing for television, though last year she directed a film for a producer who wanted a movie about himself. "Back in 1970s, our movie industry was in full bloom," Sangeeta says, her eyes beaming behind black-framed Givenchy glasses as she remembers.

"It was a great period for us. Everyone felt at home in studio, and work was deep in our hearts. Not like today." The advent of cable television and VCRs drew Pakistanis away from cinemas, but it was President Ziaul Haq's religious-based policies that sped the industry's demise.

Many cinemas were shut down, rest were heavily taxed. New laws that required producers to have college degrees thinned ranks of movie makers.
       
The message Ziaul Haq's government was sending to society was clear, Baig says: "We were being told that filmmaking was a vulgar and bad business to be in." As Lollywood's top-shelf creative talent dropped out of flagging industry, scripts got worse and Pakistanis stopped going to movies.

Bollywood filled the void; Indian movies flooded video stores and clogged cable channels. Pakistani filmmakers who stayed in the industry found themselves hamstrung by dwindling budgets. "In India, they spend $12 million on a movie, and we can spend maybe about $120,000," says Pakistani film producer Jamshed Zafar, who sidelines as an exporter of South Asian spices. "How can we compete?"

One of only directors still making movies, Syed Noor, has established a film school in Lahore to help seed new generation of filmmakers. But most directors and producers gave up long ago. Sangeeta says a few went into television; most of rest live off incomes of their adult children. Every once in a while, some of them meet at Sangeeta's modest two-story home in a woody Lahore neighborhood to reminisce over tea and screenings of their old movies.


 


Comments




Leave a Reply