KARACHI, Dec 17: Well-known Indian film-maker Mahesh Bhatt said on Wednesday that he personally condemned those films which contained excessive anti-Pakistan rhetoric, adding that lately such films had failed at the box office.

Speaking at a press conference organized by The KaraFilm Society, Mr Bhatt, who was flanked by daughter actress-turned- director Pooja Bhatt and veteran documentary film-maker Anand Patwardhan, recalled that initially films containing virulent propaganda against Pakistan had done well. “But afterwards they started to fail at the box office. I believe India and Pakistan have already demonized each other a lot. But introspection has started in Hindustan. Leading actors like Akshay Kumar and Shahrukh Khan are on record as saying that we should not indulge in anti-Pakistan rhetoric,” he said.

However, Mr Bhatt made clear that in India, which was a democratic country, film-makers were at liberty to express themselves. He maintained that censoring these [anti-Pakistan] films would not be right.

When asked about the extent to which the infamous Mumbai underworld and the extremist Rashtriya Sevak Sangh put pressure upon independent film-makers in India, Mr Bhatt said that in his career spanning over 30 years no external force had compelled him to make a creative compromise. “But some members of my fraternity do succumb to such pressures. But the major bulk of the cinema industry in India shies away from such issues. They generally make escapist — boy-meets-girl and girl-marries-boy — movies,” he said.

However, he conceded that sometime back underworld pressure had reached an all-time high. “But these forces have been weakened in the aftermath of 9/11. The situation has become better. But to say that urban terrorism has disappeared from the roads of Mumbai would be absurd,” he said.

A reporter asked Ms Bhatt, whose acting career began with an unconventional movie Daddy in 1991, whether she would like to work in a Pakistani movie. She replied that she had not been acting in movies for quite some time. She added that if she was asked to direct a Pakistani movie, she would readily accept the offer.

Ms Bhatt’s directorial debut, the 125-minute feature film Paap, is being premiered at the KaraFilm Festival in Karachi.

Answering a question, the Bangladesh-based film-maker Tareque Masud, whose 98-minute Bengali-language feature film Matir Moina (The clay bird) won the International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002, said Pakistan and Bangladesh should share with each the cinema archive of the 1950s and the 1960s.

Speaking about the theme of the movie he was planning to make in collaboration with Pakistani artists, Mr Bhatt said the film was inspired by the story of a thanedar who saved the lives of over 200 Sikhs from an enraged mob during the 1947 communal riots. “Produced by world-renowned Stevan Spielberg, The Schindler’s List focuses on a German who saved the lives of many Jews who were being brutally killed in the Nazi regime. I think we need a film like that one. In my film, a Muslim boy saves a Hindu family during Partition. However, he becomes a victim on both sides of the divide.”

Mr Bhatt said he and other film-makers might meet President Pervez Musharraf. When asked to express his views on the Kashmir issue, he said: “The Kashmir issue is such an emotional and complex issue that I cannot claim to have an insight into it. But I think that in the field of non-fiction, a lot can be done. In fictional form, the issue has been done to death. At present, I do not intend to make a film on Kashmir.”

When asked to comment on Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee’s forthcoming visit to Pakistan, Mr Bhatt said we should not be too hopeful. “The western forces pretend that they want the relations between India and Pakistan normalized. We should resolve these issues on our own,” he said.

The administrator of The KaraFilm Society, Hasan Zaidi, Anand Patwardhan and Elahe Hiptoola also spoke.