In conversation with Adnan Sarwar: 2015 and the future of Pakistani cinema

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It has been an incredible year for the Pakistani film industry.

The year saw 14 new films, most of which did reasonably well at the box office. A few even broke local records! 2015 was the year that new trends were set, bars were raised high, and our cinema made its presence felt – even at the global level!

A revival of sorts has begun, but this is only the beginning. Pakistan Today wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of our local industry. We sat down for a chat with Adnan Sarwar, director of critically acclaimed Shah, to get a feel of Lollywood’s future.

Sarwar feels that the Pakistani cinema is not out of the danger zone yet.

“This was obviously a great year. Pakistani films raked in over Rs 1 billion in business, which is fantastic! As an industry, we contributed towards the economy of the country. It is a great first step but I can’t say that it’s very safe,” the film director told Pakistan Today in a telephonic interview.

Adnan is looking forward to 2016 and 2017. In his opinion, these two years are crucial “because we will have to continue making films.”

“We need at least one film coming out every two weeks. This means in one month we will have to release two Pakistani films. So, we need 24 films a year constantly for the next few years,” he says.

Adnan said that his team is planning to release two films in the next two years but he has some concerns for the industry.

“What I am afraid of is that the numbers of films that we need every year, there are not that many filmmakers, there are not that many films, and there are not that many good scripts available in the market,” he said.

“General Ziaul Haq’s Islamisation was a huge blow to the Pakistani film industry. Cinemas were shut down and the buildings were turned into shopping malls. Hence our industry never got a chance to develop,” he added.

“A film industry of any country takes time to evolve – almost 40 to 50 years. If you look at Bollywood films from the 80s, they look very weird now. In 90s, they got better, in 2000s decade even better and now you know those people are competing with the rest of the world. We were not given that chance,” he said.

Big money or big art?

This year saw a marked increase in the number of commercial films that were being produced. These very films went on to dominate the industry. In comparison, there were not as many art movies made. The audience also seemed to gravitate towards commercial flicks. Despite this, art movies held their forte with masterpieces like Manto, Moor, and Shah.

The tussle between commercial and critical claim continues, but Sarwar believes you need a little bit of both to make an industry work.

“Both are needed. Although they have earned around 40 times more business than we did, but we pushed cinema in a different way. We made an artistic statement that Pakistani cinema is capable of producing good films. They said that Pakistani cinema is able to produce super hits. In my opinion, the best would be that we find a way somewhere in the middle,” the Shah director said.

Sarwar also suggests that movie creators should avoid making cheap copies of Hollywood films, and find their own identity instead.

“Naseer-ud-din Shah also said that we should not experiment with them. We have to make cinema our unique identity. But right now cinema is evolving and when it evolves it will itself reveal what that identity is,” he said.

Product placements – the good, bad and ugly   

This year we saw quite a few brands make it into movies. Product placement was irritating. Some viewers were thrilled while others were miffed.

However, the need for sponsors is very real for Lollywood. Our struggling film industry has many fights to win, and a budgeting issue is just another part of this big parcel. Filmmakers and producers cannot invest much of their own money into the projects and have to rely on sponsors, and ergo product placement.

“See budget is an issue. Because if you make a cheap film, people do not get that experience that they are getting from watching Bollywood or Hollywood films. Cinema is an experience,” Sarwar points out.

But brands making a guest appearance in movies are not just a Pakistani phenomenon.

“Starting from superman, brands are being used in the entire world; whether it’s Hollywood or Bollywood. Branding was always a part of cinema and it will continue to be. This cannot be avoided,” Sarwar asserted.

Despite supporting branding, Adnan says that their incorporation into the story should be done in a more intelligent way. Nevertheless, he says that this will happen with time. The reality is that brands are here to stay, however.

“One thing that we can’t afford is that a filmmaker like me makes a film and gets a loss of Rs. 2 billion. If filmmakers start going into loss then they will not make films. Film as a business has to make sense and for it to make sense as a business, we direly need brands right now. We have very few screens, just 40-50 overall. We have to make ourselves financially strong!” the director said.

The position of Bollywood

Bollywood has been the main entertainment provider in the country for years and it has garnered a good place. Despite developing the Pakistani film industry Adnan does not see Bollywood going anywhere and suggests that we learn to co-exist instead.

“People come to the cinema to see the star. If we look at Shahrukh Khan’s new film, Dilwale, the reviews suggest that it is probably the worst film ever made. But people will still go to the cinema to see Shahrukh or Kajol or any other star,” he said.

The Pakistani cinema has to be to Bollywood what British cinema is to Hollywood, suggests Adnan. “British cinema, same language, culturally it has a lot of similarities but British cinema constantly is very very edgy, very very real. Their films are on realism. So, Pakistani cinema will have to be Indian cinema’s younger brother, in my opinion,” he said.

“Other than developing our market, what we need at the moment is that we need to see Pakistani films in India. When film as a product will be exported, a lot of revenue will come for the country. This will prove to be very good for us both in financial terms and also for the country’s image,” he added.

What is in store for Adnan Sarwar in 2016?

2015 was hot and happening, and people are expecting 2016 to be better.

“Commercial films will obviously continue to come out. But what I see is that there are certain people who will be making movies that will stand out globally,” Sarwar said.

Like Moor and Manto, Shah is also going on an international platform.

“We are going to Ivy League Universities. We are taking Pakistani cinema inside Harvard. We are taking Pakistani cinema to Stanford, Cornell; we are taking it to festivals.”

So, both things will co-exist simultaneously, Adnan says but he thinks that commercial films do not have market beyond Pakistan.

“Commercial cinema, who’s reach according to me, will not be much beyond Pakistan but in Pakistan they will do great business like Jawani Phir Nahin Aani, like Karachi Say Lahore. But these films have no market once they are out of Pakistan,” the director said.

Adnan sees another kind of cinema, which Pakistan is going to produce in the coming five to eight years. “and this is the kind of cinema that we filmmakers are making.”

“Because film is an art medium. A society that is struggling a lot, facing a lot of hardships, good art is bound to come out of it. We are a nation in turmoil, we will produce good art, we will produce good, very very good cinema, and as far as we are concerned. I am trying to find the balance between the two. I am trying to find a place where our films are doing reasonably well commercially but are also very very good on the international stage,” he explained.

 

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