Introduction

In 1986 I came to Lahore as a graduate student. I had been born and raised in India and so to have the opportunity to live in Pakistan, the eternal arch enemy, was thrilling.  I had no idea what to expect but I didn’t think I would like it very much.  But almost immediately I fell in love.  I lived with a middle class Pakistani family on the edge of the old city, rode a push bike all around the city, travelled by ‘wagon’ (small Ford vans) from Gilgit to Multan and met a whole universe of fascinating people from political human rights activists to kebab walas and waderas.

When the year was up I was broken hearted and set about searching for a way to return for longer. Perhaps even, I thought at the time, permanently. I eventually got a job with the UN, working on what was then the largest refugee assistance program in the world, providing humanitarian support to over 3 million Afghan refugees.  My original one year of study ended up turning into five.  I eventually had to leave as my young career took me to other continents and organisations but as so many exiles have expressed, I left my heart in Pakistan.

Within a month of arriving in Lahore a couple of Pakistanis invited me to see movie.  It was Ek Hi Rasta (The Only Way) and I can’t remember much about it, except the leading lady was a cute doll-faced woman named Babra Sharif.  Her male counterpart was Javed Sheikh whom my friends informed me was the ‘hero of the moment’ but who in comparison to Babra suffered a serious lack of charisma.  There was a big fight scene that went on and on and of course several songs, none of which stuck with me.  

I had grown up on Hindi films. Among my first idols I counted Hema Malini, Shammi Kapoor, Zeenat Aman and Rajesh Khanna. What I saw that afternoon in Lahore was similar to what I’d seen many times before as a teenager in India. The story lines, the social values, the sound of the music and the style of acting were all pretty much the same. The only real difference was the language the actors spoke. Though I could understand most of the dialogue there were clearly a lot of phrases and words that were central to the action that I had never heard before. 

Over the years I spent in Pakistan I found myself more interested in the folk music, ghazals and qawwali than films. In fact, Ek Hi Rasta remained the only Pakistani film I had watched until I started researching this book, almost thirty years later. I was so involved in Pakistan’s immensely rich music world that  I blocked out almost all other aspects of popular culture.   I sought out concerts rather than keep tabs on the latest happenings in what was clearly a bygone form of entertainment.  

That Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan where I lived for 4 years, had no movie houses except for a dark and seemingly abandoned Bhutto-era building known as Nafdec (National Film Development Corporation) said it all. If the government’s own film promotion and development organisation could not muster the enthusiasm and budget to show films what was the point of trying to seek them out.  In Rawalpindi, right next door, an active but difficult to access movie culture seemed to be thriving but a number of factors kept thrill seekers like me away.  The films were all in Punjabi of which I understood but a few phrases.  From the posters outside the cinemas and hoardings on Murree Road the storylines involved little more than axe murder, rape and bloodlust.  Even my Punjabi friends turned up their noses at this stuff much preferring to spend the weekend watching Indian movies on their VCRs.  

When, every once in a while, a movie managed to crash into the consciousness of Islamabad’s elite, like the anti-Rushdi film International Gorillay (International Guerillas) one would have to travel to sections of Pindi notorious for pickpockets, prostitution and drug dealing, something my employer’s security protocols definitely prohibited.  But so fascinating did International Gorillay seem that one evening I did head down to Kamiti Chowk to buy a ticket. As I contemplated the giant hoarding on top of the cinema which depicted a martini sipping Salman Rushdie surrounded by Rambo-like guerrillas strapped with automatic weapons, chaste but anxious women and the fireballs of a hundred explosions, a stranger sidled up and asked me if I would like a woman. I replied I would not and moved slightly away. He moved with me and enquired, whether it was a boy I was looking to spend the evening with.  When once again I said ‘No” he ran through a menu of other delights: Hash? Heroin? Ganja? Porn?

With my mood soured I turned and went home, missing out on has turned into a massive world wide movie cult film. 

Movies have been made in Pakistan—mostly in Lahore—since the late 1920s and for a while Lahore was an important regional film hub in pre-Partition India. But by the late 1980s when I was lived there, the industry, not yet known as Lollywood, was on its deathbed (again).  Governments, despite establishing such high minded institutions like Nafdec, had never had time for movies. The cheap VCR and a steady stream of smuggled supply from India had meant that families which were the traditional audience of Urdu films had abandoned the movie halls to the sort of person who tried to sell me drugs and sex.  The new audience for Pakistani movies were poorly educated urban migrant working men whose tough lives as laborers could cope with and resonate with the violence and revenge and rough sex depicted in the Punjabi and Pashto gore fests.  Everyone knew that there were certain movie halls that even showed nothing but porn.

Pakistani film was a wasteland. No one cared. No one went. Nothing good was being made and in fact, hardly anything was being made period.  

Google ‘Bollywood’  and you’ll be presented with hundreds if not thousands of links to books, documentaries, shows, not to mention movies and interviews with stars.  Indian popular cinema, especially Hindi cinema, but also the many other regional cinemas of India has become a subject of serious academic study.  Thousands of books and articles are available through the internet to satisfy any aspect of filmmaking in India.  Indeed, Bollywood is India’s biggest global brand, as popular and as familiar as Toyota, Coca Cola and Apple.  

On the other hand type the word ‘Lollywood’ into Google and you’ll be confronted with a very different scenario. Thanks to a recent revival of fortunes (one of many in its history) you’ll get links to the latest films, gossip, music and star interviews.  Contemporary Lollywood presents itself as a sparkling, young, confident industry that encompasses everyone from movie makers, actors, models, musicians, fashion designers and socialities. Some of Pakistan’s recent movies are once again not only watchable they are quality works of cinematic art; several have been awarded by international festival juries.

But if you are looking for information, academic or otherwise, on the movie industry in Pakistan you are struck by how little is available. One comprehensive chronology (now out of print) and a handful of essays and a not very large collection of short journalistic articles.  A few star profiles, lots of nostalgia for a time when movies, and cinema houses and home grown stars were  more popular than Indian movies. Thankfully for a researcher such as myself, there are several fan-driven websites which are invaluable sources of information and reflections on the pre-2006 Pakistani film industry. Were it not for these websites, the world would know even less about Lollywood.

This book is an attempt to correct the imbalance.  Like the websites it is fan-driven and not academic. And it is an attempt to give the general reader with an interest in Pakistan or South Asian popular culture and cinema an introduction to the history of film making in Pakistan.  The Lahore based industry has lived and nearly died in the shadow of the giant Bollywood tree.  Which is a shame. Because at its zenith, between roughly 1965-1975, Pakistan was the 4^th largest producer of films in the world and certainly the largest among Muslim countries.  

At first glance Pakistani movies are very much like Hindi movies in their ‘feel’ and structure.  This is to be expected as the cultural milieu that was shared by Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu-speaking people of the northern part of the Indian subcontinent had been developed over centuries of close living. While maintaining separate identities and faiths there were significant areas of overlap and  common practice and belief.  The stories of all religious traditions, which many of the early movies drew on (and continue to do so) were understood and loved by people of all faiths. Many of ‘Bollywood’s’ superstars—actors, singers, writers—had been born and got their start in Lahore’s movie industry or were from parts of India that are now Pakistan.

That  Hindi and Urdu cinema shared a basic blueprint is no reason to dismiss Pakistani movies as just a copy-cat version of Bombay’s Hindi movies.  You don’t have to watch too many Pakistani movies to discover that the Lahore industry developed not only a stable of wonderful, talented artistes but also that it had its own take on the world. While the social values Pakistani movies promoted were conservative and made to appeal to an urban middle class, the history of post 1947 India and Pakistan determined what sort of attitudes were brought to them.  Lahore and Bombay both made movies about the Partition, struggled to talk about issues like women’s place in society, the role of religion in society, the modern, fast-changing westernised world and sought to engage with a broader world of filmmakers and audiences.  But as would be expected the perspective of each country would be different.  

It was not just that Pakistan was a confessional state and India was a ‘secular’ state.  It was not just an Islamic perspective vs a Hindu attitude.  The distinguishing feature of Pakistani movies which determined what stories it told and how it told them was not the Muslim faith of the vast majority of Pakistanis, It was the hostile environment in which the industry existed. It was not  only the strict religious elements that bemoaned and condemned and later violently attacked movies halls and those employed in the industry. It was the heavy hand of successive military governments which  sought to brow beat, censor and marginalise the film industry that gives Pakistani movies a special place.

Lollywood is a study of resilience. Of fighting against the odds. Of persistence and ultimately of the necessity of a people to have their culture and voice.  Part of how that is reflected is in the stories told, innovation, and a devil may care attitude towards production values.  What was important especially once the industry got back on its feet and began to gain momentum was telling stories. So yes, many Pakistani movies couldn’t match India’s bigger budgets and larger studios and better financing. But they had spirit, guts and a big humanity.

This story is told in roughly but not strictly chronological style. As I’ve mentioned the sources for a true comprehensive and chronological history of ‘Lollywood’ are too scattered for a generalist like myself. Perhaps one day an enterprising journalist with fluency in Punjabi as well as Urdu and English and with access and time to piece together the many small jigsaw pieces will write such a book.  I hope so.   But for me and this book, my approach is to focus on the so called Golden Era of Pakistani movies from about 1955-1980. I write about specific movies and particular characters in the industry-be they actors, directors, writers, singers, musicians and several themes. Being interested in what was happening in the country as the movies were being made I tell stories about other trends in the political and cultural life of Pakistan and try to tie the personalities and films into them.  

The perspective is that of a non-Pakistani, non-academic, non specialist. I write as a fan of the movies, the culture and indeed, the country and people of Pakistan.  I make no claim that the movies I have selected to discuss or the actors and singers I’ve chosen to talk about are the Best or the Greatest or the Most Important ones. Some are but also many others are not. They were ordinary movies that may have had a spark of interest or represent and reflect something I as an outsider have noticed about Pakistan.  

This is a subjective introduction to the history of movies and movie making in Pakistan. But I hope and believe that if you do read it you will end up knowing more about the general history, trajectory and dilemmas of the movies in Pakistan, even if you’ll lack an encyclopaedic knowledge.  Most of all I hope you enjoy it and learn to appreciate if not love the great statuemakers of Lollywood!