KARACHI: The Fourth International Karachi Conference organised by the Karachi Conference Foundation in collaboration with the Department of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities of the Government of Sindh kicked off with a film festival at the National Museum auditorium here on Friday.

Most of the films were short, under 20 minutes in length, revolving around various aspects of Karachi and produced by students from the University of Karachi, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (Szabist), Pakistan Air Force-Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology (PAF-Kiet), Habib University and The School of Writing.

The first of the films to be screened was produced by Saadia Sarfaraz, Arsalan Tahir, Ali Raza and Zeeshan Shah of the KU and it was about travelling in the G17 bus bringing up the question of whether the experience can be referred to as the Urdu ‘safar’ or the English ‘suffer’. In the next 10 minutes, you heard and saw students and other people in the film talking about how travelling in the bus every day added to your sorrows it was a constant struggle to get on it, find a seat, tolerate the various body odours and that conductor who was in your face even before you could settle down.

Next up was Szabist’s seven minutes long KarachiWala by Arman Tejani, Saad Soomro and Komal Ghazali that this man taking you on a tour of Karachi and its historic places such as old buildings, halls, water pumps, etc.

Of the Rulers, an 18-minute film, by PAF-Kiet’s Syed Owais Ali, Urooj Kamran Azmi, Adam Sobel and Anne Sobel was about this tractor driver who wished to go to Dubai one day. And the day comes, too. But then he turns up back home like a bad penny.

The Untouchable, a fine three minutes and 40 seconds production by Ali Rizvi of Habib University, is about a sweeper who belongs to a minority community and cleans gutters but has big dreams for his son.

Daya Ram, a five minutes and 30 seconds film by Shyan Ali of The School of Writing, is about university students who take time out to teach poor children.

The second part of the evening was dedicated to longer films with running length of over half an hour. But in between there was a panel discussion with Dr Markus Heidingsfelder of Habib University, Dr Naveen Minai of Institute of Business Administration and Tehmina Lodhi of Iqra University critiquing the students’ films.

“The films have Karachi as a space and they look at different spaces within this space where there are so many people all of whom share Karachi and no one person’s experience is the same,” Dr Minai observed.

Dr Markus said that there were definitely inconsistencies and imperfections in the films. “But that is what makes them so perfect,” he said.

Ms Lodhi focussed more on the technical side of the films. “The sound was not of that good quality,” she said. “But this is a medium of sounds and visuals,” she said.

Architect and town planner Arif Hasan then introduced director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) I.A. Rehman as a film critique, who also used to bring out the magazine Cinema the World Over. He then invited the chief guest to say a few words about the films and the relationship of films with society.

“Cinema started with a person and his camera which he used to show to others the things around him. But since producing films was rather expensive, needing funding, it made way for commercialised films. Hence documentary films were sidelined,” said I.A. Rehman, giving a bit of background to documentaries. “But the second World War brought back the documentary, even though the documentary sidelined the artist,” he added.

Still, he gave examples of artists such as Satyajit Ray, who could carry their documentary films on their own shoulders. Here in Pakistan, we had the greatest of documentary makers, the late Mushtaq Gazdar.

“In Pakistan, commercial cinema followed documentaries,” he said. “But as democracy died here, a new kind of cinema was introduced here on the wishes of Ayub Khan — propaganda films such as Nai Kiran,” he said.

“But the last 20 years have seen a revolution in documentary film making with the youth in Europe making many documentaries. Developing the 35mm or 70mm film used to be expensive. But video camera changed that today’s digital cameras have helped the individual artist to come into his own,” he said.

“Today, many universities here as well as abroad teach movie making. You can make a film on a shoestring budget. But you need to have a sense of awareness about the issues that need to be highlighted through your film,” he said. “The curriculum should also be designed as such that it encourages the student to keep an open mind. So young film-makers should know that there is more under the surface. They have to do more than just scratch the surface and look beyond the obvious,” he said.

Published in Dawn December 10th, 2016